Last year, NASA identified 13 candidate regions near the lunar South Pole to send astronauts back to the Moon. One was the Malapert massif region, which formed about four billion years ago and is the "largest and oldest impact basin on the Moon," the Center for Lunar Science and Exploration said in a study.
According to the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, "the south pole occurs amid several mountains, called massifs on the Moon. Those massifs may have been created by the impact event that produced the 2,500 km diameter South Pole-Aitken basin, the largest and oldest impact basin on the Moon".
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has now released a new image of the Malapert massif, which is stunning. According to Mark Robinson, principal investigator with the LROC project at Arizona State University, LROC shuttered the view on March 3, 2023, when the spacecraft was about 106 miles (170 kilometers) beyond the Shackleton crater. In the image, the Artemis 3 candidate landing region is partially visible.
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