The Moon's Near Side Megabasin and Far Side Bulge

Download or read book The Moon's Near Side Megabasin and Far Side Bulge written by Charles Byrne and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2014-02-01 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Luna and Lunar Orbiter photographed the far side of the Moon, the mysterious dichotomy between the face of the Moon as we see it from Earth and the side of the Moon that is hidden has puzzled lunar scientists. As we learned more from the Apollo sample return missions and later robotic satellites, the puzzle literally deepened, showing asymmetry of the crust and mantle, all the way to the core of the Moon. This book summarizes the author’s successful search for an ancient impact feature, the Near Side Megabasin of the Moon and the extensions to impact theory needed to find it. The implications of this ancient event are developed to answer many of the questions about the history of the Moon.