Lunar Crater Amundsen Honors Norwegian Polar Explorer Roald Amundsen

Summary: Lunar Crater Amundsen honors Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen, who led the first expeditions to Earth’s South and North Poles.

Lunar Aeronautical Chart (LAC) 144 shows Amundsen Crater (center right), in proximity to the moon’s south pole, about midway between south pole and lunar limb; scale 1:1,000,000 Polar Stereographic Projection: Courtesy NASA/GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center)/ASU (Arizona State University), via IAU/USGS Astrogeology Science Center Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature

Lunar Crater Amundsen honors Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen, who led the first expeditions to reach Earth’s geographic poles in Antarctica and the Arctic.

Amundsen Crater occupies the lunar near side’s southeastern quadrant. The large impact crater lies along the moon’s southern leading limb. Amundsen’s location near the lunar south pole appropriately honors Earth’s polar explorer. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) approved the crater’s name in 1964, during the organization’s XIIth (12th) General Assembly, held Tuesday, Aug. 25, to Thursday, Sept. 3, in Hamburg, Germany.

The moon’s Amundsen crater is centered at minus 84.44 degrees south latitude, 83.07 degrees east longitude, according to the IAU’s Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. The near side southern hemisphere crater obtains northernmost and southernmost latitudes of minus 82.85 degrees south and minus 86.26 degrees south, respectively. Amundsen’s easternmost and westernmost longitudes extend to 104.12 degrees east and 67.6 degrees east, respectively. The south polar lunar crater’s diameter spans 103.39 kilometers.

Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (July 16, 1872-June 18, 1928) was born in Borge, southeastern Norway, to captain and shipowner Jens Ingebregt Amundsen (Dec. 27, 1820-Aug. 15, 1886) and his wife, Hanna Henrikke Gustava Sahlquist Amundsen (Feb. 12, 1837-Sept. 9, 1893). As the youngest of the couple’s four sons, Roald was preceded by Jens Ole Antonius (1866-1922), Gustav Zahlquist (June 7, 1868) and Leon Henry Benham (Sept. 4, 1870-Dec. 11, 1934).

In his 1927 autobiography, Mitt liv som polarforsker, translated into English as My Life as an Explorer, Roald recalled that, at age 15, he was captivated by the expeditionary writings of “the great British explorer” (page 2), Sir John Franklin (April 16, 1786-June 11, 1847). Teen-aged Roald determined to become an Arctic explorer and began training to endure nature’s hardships.

Norwegian explorer, oceanographer and zoologist Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (Oct. 10, 1861-May 13, 1930) also inspired teen-aged Roald. On Wednesday, Oct. 3, 1888, Nansen and five companions successfully completed the first crossing of Greenland’s interior.

His mother’s ambition was for him to become a doctor. He entered the university at age 18 to study medicine. He described himself as “a worse than indifferent student” (page 4) and left the program, at age 21, after his mother’s death.

On Tuesday, June 16, 1903, Roald and six companions launched their expedition to navigate the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The expedition’s sighting of American whaling vessel Charles Hansson on Saturday, Aug. 26, 1905, approaching from the west, told the explorers that Gjøa, their 45-ton sloop, had successfully navigated the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and now reached open waters. On Tuesday, Dec. 5, 1905, Roald arrived at Fort Egbert, the U.S. Army’s northernmost post, to telegraph the expedition’s victory to the world.

Roald’s followed his Northwest Passage navigation with polar attainments. He reached the South Pole by dogsled Dec. 14, 1911. On May 12, 1926, Roald and 15 companions made the first overflight of the North Pole. The expedition flew the Norge, a semi-rigid airship designed by expedition pilot Umberto Nobile (Jan. 21, 1885-July 30, 1978).

Roald disappeared 25 months after his North Pole overflight. On Monday, June 18, 1928, he boarded French twin-engine flying boat Latham 47 for a search-and-rescue mission for Umberto Nobile’s downed airship Italia in the Arctic north of Spitsbergen. The Italia had crashed on pack ice Friday, May 25. Roald’s mission comprised Norwegian aviation pioneer Leif Ragnar Dietrichson (Sept. 1, 1890)-June 18, 1928), French military aviator René Cyprien Guilbaud (Oct. 8, 1890-June 18, 1928), French Naval Aviation maître (petty officer) and mechanic Gilbert George Paul Brazy (Feb. 15, 1902-June 18, 1928), French Navy officer and aviator Albert Madeleine Ludovic Alphonse Cavelier de Cuverville (Nov. 2, 1892-June 18, 1928), and French Navy second maître (leading seaman) and radio operator Émile Valette aimed to fly to the Arctic north of Spitsbergen to search for Umberto Nobile’s airship Italia. The Italia had crashed on pack ice Friday, May 25.

Roald’s and his companions’ bodies have never been found. The Latham 47’s torn-off port float was found off the coast of northern Norway’s Troms County Friday, Aug. 31, two and one-half months after takeoff. On Saturday, Oct. 13, the aircraft’s fuel tank was found at Haltenbanken, the part of the Norwegian continental shelf off Central Norway’s Trøndelag County.

The takeaway for lunar Crater Amundsen is that the crater’s location near the lunar south pole honors Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen’s accomplishment as leader of the first expedition to reach Earth’s South Pole.

Lunar south pole mosaic comprises about 40 images taken between December 2005 and March 2006 by the Advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA’s (European Space Agency) SMART-1; depicted area measures about 500 by 150 kilometers; image mosaic by M. Ellouzi/B. Foing; mosaic released Dec. 3, 2008: ESA/SMART-1/Space-X (Space Exploration Institute), CC BY SA 3.0 IGO Intergovernmental Organization, via The European Space Agency

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Lunar Aeronautical Chart (LAC) 144 shows Amundsen Crater (center right), in proximity to the moon’s south pole, about midway between south pole and lunar limb; scale 1:1,000,000 Polar Stereographic Projection: Courtesy NASA/GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center)/ASU (Arizona State University), via IAU/USGS Astrogeology Science Center Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature @ https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/images/Lunar/lac_144_wac.pdf

Lunar south pole mosaic comprises about 40 images taken between December 2005 and March 2006 by the Advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA’s (European Space Agency) SMART-1; depicted area measures about 500 by 150 kilometers; image mosaic by M. Ellouzi/B. Foing; mosaic released Dec. 3, 2008: ESA/SMART-1/Space-X (Space Exploration Institute), CC BY SA 3.0 IGO Intergovernmental Organization, via European Space Agency @ http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2008/03/Lunar_south_pole_mosaic_-_annotated

For further information:

Amundsen, Roald. My Life as an Explorer. Garden City NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1927.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/roaldamundsenmyl00amun_0/

Amundsen, Roald. The North West Passage: Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship “Gjöa” 1903-1907 by Roald Amundsen With a Supplement by First Lieutenant Hansen Vice-Commander of the Expedition. With About One Hundred and Thirty-Nine Illustrations and Three Maps. Vol. I. London UK: Archibald Constable and Company Limited, 1908.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/northwestpassage01amun/

Amundsen, Roald. The North West Passage: Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship “Gjöa” 1903-1907 by Roald Amundsen With a Supplement by First Lieutenant Hansen Vice-Commander of the Expedition. With About One Hundred and Thirty-Nine Illustrations and Three Maps. Vol. II. London UK: Archibald Constable and Company Limited, 1908.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/northwestpassage02amun/

Amundsen, Roald. The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the Fram, 1910-1912. In two volumes. Translated from the Norwegian by A.G. Chater. London UK: John Murray, 1912.
Volume I: Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/southpoleaccount01/
Volume II: Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/southpoleaccount02/

Bown, Stephen R. The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen. A Merloyd Lawrence Book. Boston MA: Da Capo Press, 2012.

Byron, B.D.; K. (Kurt) D. Retherford; T.K. Greathouse; K.E. Mandt; A.R. Hendrix; M.J. Poston; Y. Liu; J. (Joshua) T. Cahill; and E. (Erwan) Mazarico. “Effects of Space Weathering and Porosity on the Far-UV Reflectance of Amundsen Crater. AGU 100, vol. 124, issue 3 (March 2019): 823-836.
Available via Wiley Online @ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018JE005908

Consolmagno, Guy; and Dan M. Davis. Turn Left at Orion. Fourth edition. Cambridge UK; New York NY: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Eubanks, Thomas Marshall. “Amundsen Crater: Access to Lunar Volatiles and Sunlit Areas on a Level Plain.” NASA Ames Research Center Lunar Science for Landed Missions Workshop, Jan. 10-12, 2018.
Available @ https://lunar-landing.arc.nasa.gov/program

International Astronomical Union. “Amundsen.” USGS Astrogeology Science Center > Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. Last updated Oct. 18, 2010.
Available @ https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/247

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Available @ https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/7236

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Pecker, J.-C. (Jean-Claude), ed. XIIth General Assembly -- Transactions of the IAU Vol. XII B and XII C Proceedings of the 12th General Assembly Hamburg, Germany, August 25-September 3, 1964. Oxford UK: Blackwell Scientific Publications, Jan. 1, 1966.
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U.S. Geological Survey. Color-Coded Topography and Shaded Relief Map of the Lunar Near Side and Far Side Hemispheres. U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Investigations Series I-2769. Page last modified Nov. 30, 2016. Flagstaff AZ: U.S. Geological Survey Astrogeology Science Center, 2003.
Available via USGS Publications Warehouse @ https://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i2769/