Geological Chronicle
Located in the northeast part of the Moon to the southeast of Mare Frigoris, Atlas forms a telescopic pair with its slightly smaller neighbor Hercules. On the lunar geologic timescale, Atlas is a crater of Upper (Late) Imbrian age. Its inner wall is multiply terraced and the edge slumped, forming a sharp-edged lip, while its southwest quadrangle has an extremely high rockfall density by lunar standards.
Atlas is a floor-fractured crater with a rough, hilly interior that has a lighter albedo than its surroundings. A system of slender clefts named the Rimae Atlas crosses the crater floor and was created by volcanism, alongside dark pyroclastic deposits along the north and southeast wall edges whose spectra show feldspar-bearing mafic mineral assemblages dominated by orthopyroxene. Around the midpoint sits a complex of low central hills in a circular formation whose spectra fit an anorthositic gabbro mineralogy originating from a depth of 8.7 to 13.8 km.
In modern lunar exploration, the crater served as the primary landing site of the Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander by ispace. The spacecraft launched on December 11, 2022, but lost communication during its final descent on April 25, 2023. An analysis determined that the lander plummeted when its propellant was exhausted after the onboard computer misjudged its altitude, resulting in a crash on the lunar surface.