China's Chang'E-3 (CE-3) spacecraft touched down on the northern Mare Imbrium of the lunar nearside (340.49°E, 44.12°N), a region not directly sampled before. We report preliminary results with data from the CE-3 lander descent camera and from the Yutu rover's camera and penetrating radar. After the landing at a young 450-meter crater rim, the Yutu rover drove 114 meters on the ejecta blanket and photographed the rough surface and the excavated boulders. The boulder contains a substantial amount of crystals, which are most likely plagioclase and/or other mafic silicate mineral aggregates similar to terrestrial dolerite. The Lunar Penetrating Radar detection and integrated geological interpretation have identified more than nine subsurface layers, suggesting that this region has experienced complex geological processes since the Imbrian and is compositionally distinct from the Apollo and Luna landing sites.

Mons Rümker is a large volcanic complex in Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon and is a candidate landing site for China's Chang'E‐5 sample return mission. We conducted a comprehensive study of the topography, geomorphology, composition, and stratigraphy of the Mons Rümker region with multisource remote sensing data in order to better understand the geology of the region and provide further support for the Chang'E‐5 mission. The results show that the Rümker plateau stands 200–1300 m above the surrounding mare surface and 75% of the plateau has a slope of less than 3° at a baseline length of 30 m. Domes are the most prominent volcanic landforms in Mons Rümker and a total of 22 domes were identified and divided into two types that may represent different stages of volcanic activity. Spectral analyses indicated that Mons Rümker is covered by low‐Ti basalt and the dominant mafic mineral is high‐calcium pyroxene, though signs of mixing of highland materials and basalt have been found. Mons Rümker has three main basalt units, and their absolute model ages are 3.71 Ga, 3.58 Ga, and 3.51 Ga, respectively. Steep‐sided domes could be the youngest volcanic features on the plateau with indications that they were active until the Eratosthenian. A new geologic map of the study region was produced and used to interpret and discuss the geologic evolution of the region. Finally, we propose two candidate landing sites for the Chang'E‐5 mission.

[1] Newly obtained gravity and topography data of the Moon, combined with a lithospheric flexure model that considers both surface and subsurface loading, are used to place constraints on the density of the upper crust from a localized spectral admittance analysis. Subsurface loads are found to be relatively unimportant in the highlands, and when subsurface loads are neglected, the best fitting bulk densities for a number of highland regions are found to vary from 2590 to 2870 kg m À3 , with a mean value of 2691 kg m À3. Crustal rock densities estimated from geochemical considerations and global iron and titanium abundances imply somewhat greater densities, which we interpret as porosity affecting the gravity-derived bulk density estimates. The average porosity in the upper few kilometers of crust is calculated to be about 7.7%, which is consistent with porosity estimates of impact-fractured meteorites and terrestrial impact craters.Citation: Huang, Q., and M. A. Wieczorek (2012), Density and porosity of the lunar crust from gravity and topography,

More than 3 million range measurements from the Chang'E-1 Laser Altimeter have been used to produce a global topographic model of the Moon with improved accuracy. Our topographic model, a 360th degree and order spherical harmonic expansion of the lunar radii, is designated as Chang'E-1 Lunar Topography Model s01 (CLTM-s01). This topographic field, referenced to a mean radius of 1738 km, has an absolute vertical accuracy of approximately 31 m and a spatial resolution of 0.25 o (~7.5 km). This new lunar topographic model has greatly improved previous models in spatial coverage, accuracy and spatial resolution, and also shows the polar regions with the altimeter results for the first time. From CLTM-s01, the mean, equatorial, and polar radii of the Moon are 1737103, 1737646, and 1735843 m, respectively. In the lunar-fixed coordinate system, this model shows a COM/COF offset to be (−1.777, −0.730, 0.237) km along the x, y, and z directions, respectively. All the basic lunar shape parameters derived from CLTM-s01 are in agreement with the results of Clementine GLTM2, but CLTM-s01 offers higher accuracy and reliability due to its better global samplings.Chang'E-1, laser altimeter (LAM), lunar topographic model