Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2015

Presentation information

Poster

Symbol P (Space and Planetary Sciences) » P-PS Planetary Sciences

[P-PS23] Lunar science and exploration

Mon. May 25, 2015 6:15 PM - 7:30 PM Convention Hall (2F)

Convener:*Hiroshi Nagaoka(Waseda Univ.), Tomokatsu Morota(Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University), Masaki N Nishino(Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory, Nagoya University), Chikatoshi Honda(The University of Aizu), Yuichiro Cho(Department of Physics, Rikkyo University)

6:15 PM - 7:30 PM

[PPS23-P08] The effect of thermal fatigue on the moon surface

*Kosuke ANDO1, Tomokatsu MOROTA1 (1.Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University)

The surface condition of the Moon and asteroids reflects its geological evolution. In fact, the surface conditions are very different between celestial bodies. For example, the Moon is almost covered with fine regolith layer, on the other hand, boulders and regolith cover an asteroid Itokawa.
As usual, it has been thought that the collision of micro bodies was dominant as for the origin of regolith. However, recently, it is pointed the possibility that thermal fatigue is more dominant than collision on asteroids (Delbo et al., 2014). In this study, we investigate the size distribution of boulders around small craters at equator and high latitude, and discuss the effect of thermal fatigue on grain refining of boulders. In this study, we used the high-resolution images obtained by LRO.
The result shows that the size distributions of boulders around and in small craters differ with craters, reflecting the ages of small craters. Fresher craters have large boulders, and older craters have less large ones because boulders are destroyed with time. We will discuss the latitude dependence of the boulder destruction rate.