Geology of Shackleton Crater and the south pole of the Moon

Abstract

Using new SMART‐1 AMIE images and Arecibo and Goldstone high resolution radar images of the Moon, we investigate the geological relations of the south pole, including the 20 km‐diameter crater Shackleton. The south pole is located inside the topographic rim of the South Pole‐Aitken (SPA) basin, the largest and oldest impact crater on the Moon and Shackleton is located on the edge of an interior basin massif. The crater Shackleton is found to be older than the mare surface of the Apollo 15 landing site (3.3 Ga), but younger than the Apollo 14 landing site (3.85 Ga). These results suggest that Shackleton may have collected extra‐lunar volatile elements for at least the last 2 billion years and is an attractive site for permanent human presence on the Moon.