1 2 3 Large Impact Basins on Mercury
1 2 3 4 Large impact basins on Mercury: Global distribution, characteristics, and modification 5 history from MESSENGER orbital data 6 7 8 Caleb I. Fassett1, James W. Head2, David M. H. Baker2, Maria T. Zuber3, David E. Smith3,4, 9 Gregory A. Neumann4, Sean C. Solomon5, Christian Klimczak5, Robert G. Strom6, Clark R. 10 Chapman7, Louise M. Prockter8, Roger J. Phillips7, Jürgen Oberst9, Frank Preusker9 11 12 13 14 1Department of Astronomy, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, USA. 15 2Department of Geological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA. 16 3Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of 17 Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. 18 4NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA. 19 5Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C., 20 USA. 21 6Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA. 22 7Department of Space Sciences, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, USA. 23 8The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, USA. 24 9Institute of Planetary Research, German Aerospace Center, Berlin, Germany. 25 26 27 For submission to JGR Planets Special Section on MESSENGER 28 v.17 29 June 4, 2012 30 31 Abstract 32 33 The formation of large impact basins (diameter D ≥ 300 km) was an important process in the 34 early evolution of Mercury and influenced the planet’s topography, stratigraphy, and crustal 35 structure. We catalog and characterize this basin population on Mercury from global 36 observations by the MESSENGER spacecraft, and we use the new data to evaluate basins 37 suggested on the basis of the Mariner 10 flybys.
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