Impact basin of Mare Nubium: Reconstruction and geological evolution

Investigation of Mare impact basin, especially ancient Mare impact basin, can contribute to deeply understand two kinds of geological processes on the moon and even on the solar system, which are endogenous and exogenous geological processes, respectively. And, study of ancient Mare impact basin is an important tie between early evolution and current state. Mare Nubium impact basin is one of the most ancient impact basins, forming at Pre-Nectarian Period, and has been modified extensively by later endogenous and exogenous geological processes. In order to reconstruct the original Mare Nubium impact basin and understand the geological evolution processes, we attempt to investigate its geological evolution through multi-source remote sensing data, such as LRO WAC image data, LOLA topographic data and GRAIL gravity data. The results show that the Mare Nubium basin is a triple-concentric rings impact basin with central uplift, and the diameters of triple-concentric rings are 740km, 500km, 340km, whose center location is at 16 degrees W, 21 degrees S, approximately. The event of Mare Nubium impact basin destroyed the primeval structure of crust in this region and subsequently flooded by mare basalt, forming the current terrain features and gravity anomaly features that we observed.