Submission Date

4-28-2025

Document Type

Paper

Department

Physics & Astronomy

Adviser

Kassie Martin-Wells

Committee Member

Tom Carroll

Committee Member

Chris Sadowski

Department Chair

Casey Schwarz

Project Description

Based on the number of primary craters on a surface, one can determine the age of that surface, but secondary craters contaminate that count. No single characteristic can distinguish primaries from secondaries with certainty; a feature that is present in one collection of secondaries can be absent in another due to the multitude of processes involved in their formation and degradation. We aim to develop a pipeline that will classify craters based on characteristics that have been used to differentiate secondaries on the Moon, including elevation profiles, degradation state, radar circular polarization ratio, rock abundance, and spatial clustering. We utilize photographic and radar data, which can be visualized, extracted, and referenced using publicly available remote sensing data of the lunar surface, accessible through the Java Mission-planning and Analysis for Remote Sensing (JMARS) geospatial information system software. I discuss plans for the pipeline's structure and preliminary versions of programs that will determine depth-to-diameter ratio and slope ratio from elevation profiles, degree of spatial clustering, and orientation toward a primary. The difference in average slope ratio between a set of primaries and secondaries suggests that slope ratio may be helpful in differentiating secondaries when used in conjunction with other measurements. We conclude that it is best to initially select parameters that result in an excess of possible secondaries identified by the procedures because these craters will be further sorted when used in combination with the other elements of the pipeline.

Comments

This work was supported by a NASA RIA Grant (80NSSC24K0779).

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