 Oblique Lunar Orbiter 5 image of McNair (left) and Jarvis (right) | |
| Coordinates | 35°42′S147°18′W / 35.7°S 147.3°W Coordinates: 35°42′S147°18′W / 35.7°S 147.3°W |
|---|---|
| Diameter | 29 km |
| Depth | Unknown |
| Colongitude | 148° at sunrise |
| Eponym | Ronald E. McNair |
McNair is a small lunar impact crater on the far side of the Moon. It lies within the double-ringed Apollo basin, inside the eastern part of the interior ring. It has partly merged with the crater Jarvis, and the two share a common rim. To the south of McNair lies Borman.
Lunar craters are impact craters on Earth's Moon. The Moon's surface has many craters, almost all of which were formed by impacts.
An impact crater is an approximately circular depression in the surface of a planet, moon, or other solid body in the Solar System or elsewhere, formed by the hypervelocity impact of a smaller body. In contrast to volcanic craters, which result from explosion or internal collapse, impact craters typically have raised rims and floors that are lower in elevation than the surrounding terrain. Impact craters range from small, simple, bowl-shaped depressions to large, complex, multi-ringed impact basins. Meteor Crater is a well-known example of a small impact crater on Earth.
The far side of the Moon is the hemisphere of the Moon that always faces away from Earth. The far side's terrain is rugged with a multitude of impact craters and relatively few flat lunar maria compared to the near side. It has one of the largest craters in the Solar System, the South Pole–Aitken basin. Both sides of the Moon experience two weeks of sunlight followed by two weeks of night; even so, the far side is sometimes called the "dark side of the Moon", where "dark" is used to mean unseen rather than lacking sunlight.
This is a bowl-shaped feature with a somewhat worn outer rim. There are some tiny craterlets along the southern rim, and a narrow cut through the edge to the south-southwest. The interior floor is relatively featureless.
The crater name was approved by the IAU in 1988 in honor of Ronald McNair, killed in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986. [1] The crater was formerly designated Borman A, a satellite crater of Borman.
The International Astronomical Union is an international association of professional astronomers, at the PhD level and beyond, active in professional research and education in astronomy. Among other activities, it acts as the internationally recognized authority for assigning designations and names to celestial bodies and any surface features on them.
Ronald Erwin McNair was an American NASA astronaut and physicist. He died during the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-51-L, in which he was serving as one of three mission specialists in a crew of seven.
On January 28, 1986, the NASA shuttle orbiter undertaking mission STS-51-L and the tenth flight of Space ShuttleChallenger (OV-99) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members: five NASA astronauts, one payload specialist, and a civilian school teacher. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 a.m. EST. The disintegration of the vehicle began after a joint in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff. The failure was caused by the failure of O-ring seals used in the joint that were not designed to handle the unusually cold conditions that existed at this launch. The seals' failure caused a breach in the SRB joint, allowing pressurized burning gas from within the solid rocket motor to reach the outside and impinge upon the adjacent SRB aft field joint attachment hardware and external fuel tank. This led to the separation of the right-hand SRB's aft field joint attachment and the structural failure of the external tank. Aerodynamic forces broke up the orbiter.
