Abstract

The Moon serves as a cornerstone for understanding the early evolution of the terrestrial planets, most notably the Archean Earth and pre-Noachian Mars. Its lack of plate tectonics and significant weathering means that the Moon preserves the one of the most pristine records of many geological processes including planet differentiation, crust formation, magmatic activities, andimpact cratering.Studying this record requires constraining the lunar geological chronology; impact craters, calibrated with in- situ returned samples, are a common dating metric that can be derived from remote sensing data. Because impacts vary in a wide range of sizes from meteoroid impacts to basin formation, deciphering the temporal and spatial variation of impacts in the returned sample to calibrate such records is challenging. In this talk, I introduce approaches and observations that are useful to improve our understanding about the earliest impact record and crustal evolution of the Moon, and by proxy, the other terrestrial planets. I summarize the talk by discussing future key challenges.