image: This image shows the variation in the Moon's crustal thickness, as derived from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission. Shown in white cross-hatching is the Procellarum KREEP Terrane, a large, compositionally unique area on the Moon's nearside hemisphere (left). Excluding the South Pole -- Aitken basin, which likely formed during a much earlier epoch than the Moon's other basins and is represented here by a gray circle on the Moon's farside hemisphere (right), each hemisphere exhibits 12 impact basins (black circles) with diameters of crustal thinning exceeding 200 km. GRAIL analyses revealed more large impact basins on the nearside hemisphere of the Moon than on its farside. This image is presented in two hemispherical Lambert azimuthal equal-area projections. This image relates to a paper that appeared in the 8 Nov., 2013, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by Katarina Miljković at Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in Paris, France, and colleagues was titled, "Asymmetric Distribution of Lunar Impact Basins Caused by Variations in Target Properties." view more
Credit: [Image courtesy of <i>Science</i>/AAAS]