Compositional and chronological characterization of mare crisium using Chandrayaan-1 and LROC-WAC data

The surface of the Moon has been observed by human being since time immemorial and it appears distinctly different from that of the earth. Moon is geologically inactive for quite long time and therefore it's an ideal place to study the early solar system history. The lunar surface is dominated by various morphological features such as craters, rifles, impact melts, swirls, faults, lineaments and wrinkle ridges. The mare crisium (sea of crisis) is a multi-ring mare basin in the eastern nearside of the moon. Compositional analysis and crater counting based chronological studies conducted in the present work by using Chandrayaan-1 Moon Mineralogical Mapper data (M-3), Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera - Wide Angle Camera (LROC-WAC) data. The M-3 data has been used for FeO and TiO2 mapping and to measure 1 Ism, 2 pm integrated band depth to detect the olivine and pyroxene minerals. Ch-1 TMC and LROC WAC data were used for the chronological characterization through Crater Size Frequency Distribution (CSFD). The CSFD analysis by using TMC data have provided the ages for the southwest, southcentral and southeast regions of the crisium basin as 3.4Ga, 3.6Ga, and 3.45Ga respectively. The spectral characterizations of the selected Crisium features were done to map the various lithological features such as olivine, pyroxene, plagioclase, ilmenite and olivine pyroxene mixtures which are present in the basalt, gabbroic and anorthositic gabbro rocks from the mare crisium.