This PDF file includes: SOM TextFigs. S1 to S3Background information is provided here on the major trends of wrinkle ridges in the northern smooth plains of Mercury (Fig. S1), on the sources and locations of images shown in Figs. 2 and 3, and on the crater size-frequency distributions shown in Fig. 4.

High-resolution images of Mercury's surface from orbit reveal that many bright deposits within impact craters exhibit fresh-appearing, irregular, shallow, rimless depressions. The depressions, or hollows, range from tens of meters to a few kilometers across, and many have high-reflectance interiors and halos. The host rocks, which are associated with crater central peaks, peak rings, floors, and walls, are interpreted to have been excavated from depth by the crater-forming process. The most likely formation mechanisms for the hollows involve recent loss of volatiles through some combination of sublimation, space weathering, outgassing, or pyroclastic volcanism. These features support the inference that Mercury's interior contains higher abundances of volatile materials than predicted by most scenarios for the formation of the solar system's innermost planet.

We modeled the differentiation of the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) impact melt sheet to determine whether noritic lithologies observed within SPA formed as a result of the impact. Results indicate differentiation of SPA impact melt can produce noritic layers that may accommodate observed surface compositions but only in specific scenarios. One of nine modeled impact melt compositions yielded layers of noritic materials that account for observations of noritic lithologies at depths of~6 km. In this scenario, impact occurred before a hypothesized lunar magma ocean cumulate overturn. The 50 km deep melt sheet would have formed an insulating quenched layer at the surface before differentiating. The uppermost differentiated layers in this scenario have FeO and TiO 2 contents consistent with orbital observations if they were subsequently mixed with the uppermost quenched melt layer and with less FeO-and TiO 2 -enriched materials such as ejecta emplaced during younger impacts. These results verify that noritic lithologies observed within SPA could have formed as a direct result of the impact. Therefore, locations within SPA that contain noritic materials represent potential destinations for collecting samples that can be analyzed to determine the age of the SPA impact. Potential destinations include central peaks of Bhabha, Bose, Finsen, and Antoniadi craters, as well as walls of Leibnitz and Schrödinger basins. Additionally, potential remnants of the uppermost quenched melt may be preserved in gabbroic material exposed in "Mafic Mound." Exploring and sampling these locations can constrain the absolute age of SPA, a task that ranks among the highest priorities in lunar science.