Discovery quadrangle

Discovery quadrangle as mapped by the MESSENGER spacecraft (2021)
Mariner 10 photomosaic (1975)
Exaggerated color image of the central part of the quadrangle, showing craters Checkhov, Schubert, Wergeland, and Nampeyo
Eastern part of the quadrangle. At center are Sōtatsu, Po Ya, and Tintoretto. At left are Mofolo, Equiano, and Neumann. At right are Mendes Pinto, Tsurayuki, and Pushkin.

The Discovery quadrangle lies within the heavily cratered part of Mercury in a region roughly antipodal to the 1550-km-wide Caloris Basin. Like the rest of the heavily cratered part of the planet, the quadrangle contains a spectrum of craters and basins ranging in size from those at the limit of resolution of the best photographs to those as much as 350 km across, and ranging in degree of freshness from pristine to severely degraded. Interspersed with the craters and basins both in space and time are plains deposits that are probably of several different origins. Because of its small size and very early segregation into core and crust, Mercury has seemingly been a dead planet for a long time—possibly longer than the Moon.[1][2][3] Its geologic history, therefore, records with considerable clarity some of the earliest and most violent events that took place in the inner Solar System.

The Bach quadrangle is south of Discovery quadrangle. To the west is Michelangelo quadrangle, and to the east is Debussy quadrangle. To the north is Kuiper quadrangle, and to the northwest is Beethoven quadrangle.

  1. ^ Trask, N.J. & Dzurisin, D. (1984). Geologic Map of the Discovery (H-11) Quadrangle of Mercury. U.S. Geological Survey. [1] Retrieved on 2007-12-07. Prepared for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration by the U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey.
  2. ^ Trask, N.J. & Guest, J.E. (1975). "Preliminary geologic terrain map of Mercury." Journal of Geophysical Research 80(17): 2461–2477.
  3. ^ Murray, B.C., Strom, R.G., Trask, N.J., & Gault, D.E. (1975). "Surface history of Mercury: Implications for terrestrial planets." Journal of Geophysical Research 80(17): 2508–2514.