Lacus Veris (

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

''vēris'', "Lake of Spring") is a small

lunar mare The lunar maria (; singular: mare ) are large, dark, basaltic plains on Earth's Moon, formed by ancient asteroid impacts on the far side on the Moon that triggered volcanic activity on the opposite (near) side. They were dubbed , Latin for 'seas' ...

on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

. In selenographic coordinates, the mare centered at 16.5° S, 86.1° W and is approximately 396 km long. The mare extends along an irregular 90° arc from east to north that is centered on the

Mare Orientale Mare Orientale (Latin ''orientāle'', the "eastern sea") is a lunar mare. It is located on the western border of the near side and far side of the Moon, and is difficult to see from an Earthbound perspective. Images from spacecraft have reveal ...

, covering an area of about 12,000 km². Author Eric Burgess proposed this mare as the location of a future manned lunar base, citing a 1989 study performed at the NASA

Johnson Space Center The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It was renamed in honor of the late ...

. This small, roughly crescent-shaped mare region lies between the ring-shaped Inner and Outer Rook mountains that form part of the Orientale impact basin. It lies in a topographic lowland about 1 km below the surrounding peaks. Based on data collected during the Lunar Orbiter missions and from Earth-based telescopes, the mare includes some material from the surrounding highlands. The density of crater impacts indicates that this mare is an estimated 3.5 billion years old, and it finished forming roughly 340 million years after the impact that created the Oriental basin. The mare contains eleven sinuous rilles formed from lava tubes and channels, with lengths ranging from 4 to 51 km. Many of these rilles begin in the Rook mountains and flow to the base of the mountainous scarp. There are also several

shield volcano A shield volcano is a type of volcano named for its low profile, resembling a warrior's shield lying on the ground. It is formed by the eruption of highly fluid (low viscosity) lava, which travels farther and forms thinner flows than the more vi ...

formations, each with a diameter of less than 10 km. The geological formations and the lack of collapse depressions suggest that the mare was formed by thin lava flow through tubes, rather than through basalt flooding by fissure eruptions.

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Shield Volcanoes in Lacus Veris!
LROC Post, 2012
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Lunar Orbiter 4 Lunar Orbiter 4 was a robotic U.S. spacecraft, part of the Lunar Orbiter Program, designed to orbit the Moon, after the three previous orbiters had completed the required needs for Apollo mapping and site selection. It was given a more general ...

Frame 4181 h2

{{Lunar maria Veris

See also

References

External links