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Planetary Science

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Previous Studies

Our main focus is the understanding of the implications of billion-year-old faulting within impact basins on the Moon and Mercury. We used finite element models to infer that overlapping regimes of thrust and normal faulting within several lunar mare basins results from extrusive volcanism occurring as the Moon cooled and its lithosphere grew in thickness (Freed et al., JGR, 2001). Within the Caloris Basin on Mercury, our models suggest that overlapping thrust and normal faulting indicate a transition from extrusive volcanism occurring within the basin to its occurrence outside the basin (Kennedy et al., JGR, 2008). More recently, we have shown that an unusual pattern of normal faults emanating from the center of the Caloris Basin may have resulted from a smaller impact at the basin center that caused the perturbed a pre-existing existing extensional stress field (Freed et al., EPSL, 2009). We have also developed a model to infer that observed lineations on the surface of the asteroid Eros can be explained by thermal stresses associated with a transfer to a different orbit some time in its past (Dombard and Freed, GRL, 2002)

Current Studies

We are currently developing models to understand why a ring of normal faults formed with the Raditladi and Rachmaninoff basins on Mercury, a pattern of faulting not seen anywhere else in the solar system. Our initial modeling suggests that this faulting may result from temperature-induced contraction of the porous breccia that underlies basin fill. If true, such contraction may be an important process that requires reinterpretation of the implications of faulting in other basins on Mercury and the Moon.

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