Milichius A is a Copernican-aged crater found in the middle of Mare Insularum (upper left). There are many different sizes of impact craters in this view, from 9 km in diameter (Milichius A) all the way down to craters that are just a few meters across. The "cracked" appearance of the rim exterior is a result of impact melt flowing after emplacement, and is fairly common in other similarly-sized, relatively young Copernican-aged craters. You can also see that while there are numerous smaller craters on the surrounding ejecta blanket, the interior of the crater seemingly has far fewer craters than the exterior. Does this mean that there have been no impacts on the inner wall of Milichius A? Probably not - there have almost certainly been many small impacts on the steep surface. Instead, the streaks that you see on the crater walls are places where materials have simply slumped into the crater, covering and obscuring the smaller craters as it slides down the walls of the crater, although some of the darker, low-albedo streaks may actually be impact melt flows.
Uncalibrated LROC NAC data; north is up; image width is 6 km. Browse the whole NAC Image!
Published by Samuel Lawrence on 18 September 2009