ИСТИНА

The South polar region of the Moon is considered by the "Roskosmos" corporation as the primary target for the Russian program of study and exploration of the Moon. The high interest for this area is related to the enhanced concentrations of hydrogen in its regolith and to the diversity of geological processes that acted in the lunar sub-polar regions. Resurfacing in the South polar region was largely linked to the formation of the oldest known, pre-Nectarian, SPA basin and the other basins of the Nectarian and Imbrian ages. The SPA ejecta deposits have a high scientific value because they may contain materials excavated from the lunar mantle and, in any case, represent the oldest materials that can be found on the surface of the Moon. The younger craters that were able to penetrate beneath the SPA deposits are also of a great interest because their ejecta could deliver the pre-SPA materials to the surface. One of the major tasks during photogeological analysis of areas selected for the landing missions is the determination of the sources of materials that accumulated at the landing spot. For the Moon, the principal re-distributors of materials are impact craters that form contiguous ejecta, fields of the secondary craters, and rays. In our work, we estimated thickness of the basin and crater ejecta blankets using several proposed model approaches and the geological map of the South polar region of the Moon.