Sentences with phrase «large lunar craters»

Not exact matches

And a mission to return a sample from the moon's largest impact crater would have been some comfort to lunar scientists still smarting from Obama's decision to redirect NASA's crewed space exploration from the moon to near - Earth asteroids.

Lava flows three billion or four billion years ago, for instance, flooded lunar plains and filled craters there, whereas large impacts excavated vast amounts of lunar material that fell to the surface, burying or obscuring nearby craters.

During the crucial moments at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, scientists and engineers with LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) peered in silent concentration as successive images of the crater grew larger on their screens.

«By comparing the measured craters to the number and spatial distribution of large impact basins on Mercury, we found that they started to accumulate at about the same time, suggesting that the resetting of Mercury's surface was global and likely due to volcanism,» said lead author Dr. Simone Marchi, who has a joint appointment between two of NASA's Lunar Science Institutes, one at the SwRI in Boulder and another at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.