Asteroid strikes smoothens Moon's surface

THE lunar surface is marred by impact craters, remnants of the collisions that have occurred over the past 4.5 billion years. The Orientale basin, the Moon's most recently formed sizeable crater, stands out from the rest. The crater, which lies along the southwestern boundary between the near and far sides of the moon, appears as a dark spot ringed by concentric circles of ejecta that reach more than 900 kilometers (560 miles) from the impact location.Though other craters have similar rings, the lunar surface surrounding the Orientale basin is unusually rough with reduced concavity. The anomalous features were identified by Kreslavsky and Head after they produced a map of the lunar surface topographic roughness using observations from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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