The moon may have many lunar craters than were previously known

The scientists, using data on 7,895 previously identified craters and 1,411 dated craters, were able to apply machine learning to train a deep neural network. With information from China’s first and second lunar orbiters (Chang’e 1 and Chang’e 2), the network identified 109,956 new craters. The two unmanned spacecraft were launched in 2007 and 2010, respectively.

“Impact craters (are) the most diagnostic features of the lunar surface. This contrasts sharply with the Earth’s surface. It is very difficult to trace the history of the Earth from being affected by asteroids and comets during the last 4 billion years. ‘years,’ said the study’s author Chen Yang, from Jilin University College of Earth Sciences and the Key Laboratory for Exploring Lunar and Deep Space at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“The earth and the moon have been hit by the same impactful population over time, but large lunar craters have experienced limited degradation for billions of years. Therefore, lunar impact craters can track the evolution of the Earth, “he said in an email.

The craters of the moon lack water, an atmosphere, and tectonic plate activity, three forces that erode the Earth’s surface, meaning not all meteorite impacts except the most recent are visible.

On the moon, however, almost any tooth goes nowhere. The dusty footsteps of astronauts who walked on the moon during the Apollo missions are still there today.

According to the Lunar Planetary Institute, approximately 80% of the Earth’s surface is less than 200 million years old, while more than 99% of the Moon’s surface is more than 3 billion years old. The age of a large crater can also be determined by counting how many small craters are inside it.

The latest study is not the first to deploy machine learning to detect lunar craters, Mohamad Ali-Dib told the University of Montreal’s Exoplanet Research Institute.

He was part of a team at the University of Toronto Scarborough that used data from a laser altimeter, a device used aboard satellites orbiting the planet to map terrain, rather than optical images that used it. Chinese team, to detect craters. The UT team identified about 6,000 craters on the Moon that were not previously identified in research published in 2018.

“Machine learning can be used to detect craters on the moon,” he said in an email. Craters are “a window into the dynamic history of the solar system.

China became the third country in the world to successfully collect rocks from the Moon when in mid-December the unmanned Chang’e-5 mission returned to Earth with the country’s first moon samples.