LU60645GT and MA132843GT catalogues of Lunar and Martian impact craters developed using a Crater Shape-based interpolation crater detection algorithm for topography data

Abstract

For Mars, 57,633 craters from the manually assembled catalogues and 72,668 additional craters identified using several crater detection algorithms (CDAs) have been merged into the MA130301GT catalogue. By contrast, for the Moon the most complete previous catalogue contains only 14,923 craters. Two recent missions provided higher-quality digital elevation maps (DEMs): SELENE (in 1/161 resolution) and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (we used up to 1/5121). This was the main motivation for work on the new Crater Shape-based interpolation module, which improves previous CDA as follows: (1) it decreases the number of false-detections for the required number of true detections; (2) it improves detection capabilities for very small craters; and (3) it provides more accurate automated measurements of craters' properties. The results are: (1) LU60645GT, which is currently the most complete (up to $ DZ8 km) catalogue of Lunar craters; and (2) MA132843GT catalogue of Martian craters complete up to $ DZ2 km, which is the extension of the previous MA130301GT catalogue. As previously achieved for Mars, LU60645GT provides all properties that were provided by the previous Lunar catalogues, plus: (1) correlation between morphological descriptors from used catalogues; (2) correlation between manually assigned attributes and automated measurements;(3) average errors and their standard deviations for manually and automatically assigned attributes such as position coordinates, diameter, depth/diameter ratio, etc; and (4) a review of positional accuracy of used datasets. Additionally, surface dating could potentially be improved with the exhaustiveness of this new catalogue. The accompanying results are: (1) the possibility of comparing a large number of Lunar and Martian craters, of e.g. depth/diameter ratio and 2D profiles; (2) utilisation of a method for re-projection of datasets and catalogues, which is very useful for craters that are very close to poles; and (3) the extension of the previous framework for evaluation of CDAs with datasets and ground-truth catalogue for the Moon.

Geologic Analyses of the Causes of Morphological Variations in Lunar Craters Within the Simple‐to‐Complex Transition

“…The depth versus diameter of transitional craters follows a nonlinear relationship. The power law exponent for these morphologies is less than ~1 that has been estimated for lunar simple craters spanning nearly all sizes (Pike, , , ; Salamunićcar et al, ; Wood & Anderson, ) and greater than the exponent determined from global studies of lunar complex craters (~0.3; Kalynn et al, ; Pike, , , , ; Salamunićcar et al, ; Williams & Zuber, ; Wood & Anderson, ). The depths of transitional craters increase at a lower rate relative to depths of simple craters and at a higher rate as compared to depths of complex craters, which is possibly due to higher amount of slumping than in simple craters but still lower than the amount of modification that yields continuous terraces and central peaks in complex craters.…”

A New Global Database of Lunar Impact Craters >1–2 km: 1. Crater Locations and Sizes, Comparisons With Published Databases, and Global Analysis

“…Povilaitis et al () do not state how they determined a complete D = 5–20 km crater census, and they did not add any craters D ≥ 20 km. Salamunićcar et al () estimated ≳8 km completeness based on a change in slope in a cumulative crater SFD.…”

Crater detection via genetic search methods to reduce image features

“…Stepinski and Urbach (2008) performed a global martian survey resulting in 75, 919 craters ranging in size from 1.36km to 347km by identifying round depressions in the surface and then applying machine learning for higher accuracy. Salamunicar et al (2012) applied fuzzy edge detection and presents global coverage. Salamuniccar has many works relating to global coverage including Loncaric (2010, 2008) on Mars and Salamuniccar et al (2011) on Phobos.…”