Dr. Kelsey Young

But also it helps us, you know, cratering is a really – I did my PhD on impact cratering, so I will try to not dive too deep into this, pun intended –

But impact cratering is a really important process because of a few reasons.

One, it can bring material up from depth.

So it can expose...

rocks from deeper in the surface on, you know, bring them to the surface.

Obviously not for tiny impact craters that, you know, are formed from these centimeter size impacts, but larger craters can suck stuff up from depth that is kind of like a geologist's cheat code, right?

Because otherwise, how are you going to get it?

How are you going to access that part of lunar history if it's buried beneath the surface?

But impact craters kind of do our work for us, right, of bringing the material to the

And so cratering has played such a pivotal role in the evolution of the moon and the evolution of our own planet.

And there's still scientific value in understanding cratering rates and how they have changed over time, what they're like today, and how it sort of touches other active lunar surface processes.

Oh, it's a great question.

And that's a really great way to ask the question.

And, you know, I think.

LRO, you know, is an example of an orbiting spacecraft that has incredible payloads on it that have returned.

We're already doing that.

And it's been super amazing.

One of my favorite LRO fun facts is we actually, because of an instrument on LRO called Lola, it's a laser altimeter instrument, we actually know the topography of the moon better than we know the topography of the Earth.

Yeah.

The Earth has oceans and vegetation and cities and all that.