Ponded Impact Melt Dynamics and its Effects on Pond Surface Morphology - Insights from King Crater

King crater is a 77-km diameter impact feature located at 5.0°N and 120.5°E on the lunar farside. Previous work delimited King crater with an asymmetric distribution of ejecta that includes a large impact melt pond (~385 square kilometer surface area), located in nearby Al-Tusi crater. The pond provides an opportunity to study the behavior of a large impact melt deposit. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Wide Angle Camera (WAC) and Narrow Angle Cameras (NAC) [1] imaged King crater from a nominal 50 km altitude at pixel scales of 100 meters and up to 0.5 meters, respectively providing the means to create geologic maps for the region. Digital terrain/elevation models (DTMs) were derived [2] from both WAC and NAC images for the area, and supplemented the mapping effort. The high-resolution (50 cm/p) NAC images show fine details within the Al-Tusi melt pond that raise questions about melt pond dynamics and evolution. These include both positive- and negative-relief features, anomalous crater morphologies, and flow features that show variable degrees of melt viscosity. WAC DTM processing reveals a horizontal and relatively flat (at the 20 m contour interval) pond, demonstrating that an equipotential surface was achieved during initial melt accumulation. The NAC DTM shows kilometer-scale zones of topographic down-warping within the 20 m contour interval. The perimeters of these depressed areas show moderate to high spatial correlation with the occurrence of negative relief features (~10 to 100 m in length). Such sagging may have occurred as the result of contraction and/or compaction within the melt both during and following cooling, with the negative relief features resulting from consequent structural failure and separation of the thickening surface crust. The variability in the degree of contraction/compaction may be explained by the presence of underlying hummocky ejecta deposits (which probably also explains the positive relief features) emplaced by the King impact within Al-Tusi crater prior to melt accumulation. Crater counts on the extended ejecta blanket [e.g., 3] show that King crater is likely to be ~ 1 Ga in age.