Block distributions on the lunar surface: A comparison between measurements obtained from surface and orbital photography

Abstract

Enlargements of Lunar-Orbiter photography were used in conjunction with a digitizing tablet to collect the locations and dimensions of blocks surrounding the Surveyor 1, 3, 6, and 7 landing sites. Data were reduced to the location and the major axis of the visible portion of each block. Shadows sometimes made it difficult to assess whether the visible major axis corresponded with the actual principal dimension. These data were then correlated with the locations of major craters in the study areas, thus subdividing the data set into blocks obviously associated with craters and those in intercrater areas. A block was arbitrarily defined to be associated with a crater when its location was within 1.1 crater radii of the crater's center. Since this study was commissioned for the ultimate purpose of determining hazards to landing spacecraft, such a definition was deemed appropriate in defining block-related hazards associated with craters. Size distributions of smaller fragments as determined from Surveyor photography were obtained as measurements from graphical data. Basic comparisons were performed through use of cumulative frequency distributions identical to those applied to studies of crater-count data