EVALUATION OF IMPACT CRATER MORPHOLOGIES AND RELAXATION ON ENCELADUS

Enceladus is an icy satellite of Saturn with a geologically active surface, inferred global subsurface ocean, and rocky core. Craters dominate the northern hemisphere, while the sparsely cratered younger icy crust of the southern hemisphere consists of mostly tectonic structures. The cratered areas form a belt through the sub- and anti-Saturnian regions, wrapping around the north pole. Most research into this moon’s surface dynamics has focused on the highly active South Polar Terrain, and much is still to be discovered about the rheology and heat flux within Enceladus’ ice shell. By examining crater morphology across the surface, we can evaluate how rheology and heat flux affect the crater form and, by association, influence the mechanics of the ice shell. Here, we use ArcGIS Pro to categorize and describe the largest 1,250 craters using images from the Cassini mission and a global crater database. Spatial statistical analyses were conducted on the categories of relaxation state, morphology, crater shape, and clustering to clarify the geological processes influencing the geomorphology of various regions of the cratered terrain. Point density maps serve as visual aids to these analyses. We find fewer craters with central peaks in the southern hemisphere than in the northern hemisphere. We also found that the most relaxed craters were in the northern hemisphere across each crater diameter category. Additionally, most of the moon’s largest craters had the highest degree of relaxation and were north of the equator. Further exploration of Enceladus’ surface could include using new topographic data to quantify the degree of relaxation within different crater-size groups.