Fra Mauro
Location: ·
Apollo 14's landing region — its hills are ejecta hurled hundreds of kilometers by the Imbrium impact.
Apollo 14 landed here in February 1971 to sample the Fra Mauro formation, the blanket of material thrown out by the Imbrium impact. The reasoning was that ejecta from a basin of known extent, sampled anywhere, dates the basin.
It worked. The samples put the Imbrium impact at about 3.85 billion years, and that number anchors the lunar timescale: every crater-counting age for the Moon, and by extension for Mars and Mercury, is calibrated against a handful of dated sites of which this is one. The crew walked toward Cone crater, 300 m across, to reach material excavated from deeper in the formation, and turned back short of the rim.
Sunrise
Sunset
Sunrise and sunset on Fra Mauro
| Event | Time | Lit |
|---|---|---|
| Computing… | ||
- Sunrise / Sunset: at the feature's centre (IAU Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature).
- Lit: the illuminated fraction of the Moon's disc at that moment.
Named after
Fra Mauro, Venetian monk and cartographer (died 1459).
Further info
Official record from the IAU Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature: Fra Mauro
Wikipedia: Fra Mauro (crater)