Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera

Getting Cracked in Wiener F

An impact crater is caught in the process of disintegration and is barely visible today (40.881°N; 150.608°E). NAC frame M169574198L, illumination is from the southwest, north is up, image is ~600 m wide [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

This small impact crater happened to form just a little too close to the widening edge of the Wiener F crater. Fault-slumping of the upper wall of Wiener F has cracked it along a series of linear, subparallel fractures, and the whole area appears to be in the process of down-slope migration. Eventually, if the process were to continue, the disintegration would be complete and the small superposed crater would no longer be recognizable.

Context image from NAC frame; 1.3 km wide; downslope is to the lower left [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

The context images above and below show the location of this feature -- nestled within the slumping and fault-bounded eastern crater wall that has produced an irregular protrusion into the surrounding highland terrain. The occurrence of Wiener F within a former, older and larger crater is a coincidence of nature. Who says impacts cannot occur in the same place twice? Here we see three nested craters!

The WAC mosaic context image is approximately 94 km in width [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Examine the full NAC frame below. Other examples of fault-terraced crater walls can be found with Top of the Landslide, Aristarchus Spectacular!, and Post-impact Modification of Klute W.


Back to Images