Lunar wrinkle ridges can be hundreds of kilometers long, tens of kilometers wide, and hundreds of meters high. Read more in Wilhelms, 1987. They can have a sinuous or linear appearance with asymmetric cross-sections. In other words, the feature that you see could easily be made up of a smaller ridge superposed on a broad rise.
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Lunar wrinkle ridges are found in the mare basalt deposits that filled the giant impact basins on the Moon. Frequently, wrinkle ridges are oriented concentric to large impact basins. Loading of the basin floor with multiple eruptions of mare basalts causes the formation of wrinkle ridges in the basin center and graben, or trenches, along the mare margins (see below). The tremendous weight of the newer basalt layers then causes the center of the basin to sag. As the basin center sags, the basalts slide inward, causing compression that results in folding and faulting of the basalt. The sagging of the basin under the weight of the basalt also causes the opening of graben along the edges of the basalt layers.
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We also know, thanks to the samples collected by the Apollo 11 astronauts, that the mare basalts in this region are rich in titanium. Study of the Apollo samples has shown it is relatively straightforward to extract resources (especially oxygen) from titanium-rich lunar soils.
More information can be found about LRO at:
› http://www.nasa.gov/lro
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/lro-20100428-tranquilitatis.html
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