Impact craters that form on every planetary body provide a record of planetary surface evolution. On heavily cratered surfaces, new craters that form often overlap antecedent craters, but it is unknown how the presence of antecedent craters alters impact crater formation. We use overlapping complex crater pairs on the lunar surface to constrain this process and find that crater rims are systematically lower where they intersect antecedent crater basins. The rim morphology of the new crater depends on the depth of the antecedent crater and the degree of overlap between the craters. Our observations suggest that new craters do not always obliterate underlying topography and that transient rim collapse is altered by antecedent topography. This study represents the first formalization of the influence of antecedent topography on rim morphology and provides process insight into a common impact scenario relevant to the geology of potential Artemis landing sites.

中文翻译：

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前期地形对复杂陨石坑形成的影响


每个行星体上形成的撞击坑提供了行星表面演化的记录。在有严重陨石坑的表面上，形成的新陨石坑经常与先前的陨石坑重叠，但目前尚不清楚先前陨石坑的存在如何改变撞击坑的形成。我们使用月球表面重叠的复杂陨石坑对来限制这一过程，并发现陨石坑边缘在与先前陨石坑盆地相交的地方系统地较低。新陨石坑的边缘形态取决于先前陨石坑的深度和陨石坑之间的重叠程度。我们的观察表明，新的陨石坑并不总是会消除下面的地形，并且短暂的边缘塌陷会被先前的地形所改变。这项研究代表了先前地形对边缘形态影响的首次形式化，并提供了对与潜在阿耳忒弥斯着陆点地质相关的常见影响场景的过程洞察。