First crustal magnetic anomaly estimates from the magnetometer observations of the Korea pathfinder lunar orbiter

First lunar crustal magnetic anomalies from the vector magnetometer onboard the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) called Danuri are evaluated at 100 km altitude over the areas where earlier satellite magnetic mapping missions observed strong anomalies. Although the KPLO data are still undergoing quality-control processing, the publicly available ‘partially processed (PP)’ data confirm five strong anomaly regions, Gerasimovich crater, Antipode of Serenitatis basin, Hayford crater, Crisium basin and Abel crater regions, where only marginal anomaly features were previously revealed at the higher altitudes. However, higher-altitude anomalies help constrain the regional effects of lunar crustal magnetic sources commonly masked by the shorter wavelengths of the shallower crustal sources. This study resolves five prominent anomaly features from six-months, PP-level KPLO magnetometer tracks by wavenumber correlation filtering. The higher-altitude anomaly features were investigated for mapping regional magnetic sources and constraining our understanding of lunar magnetism. The KPLO mission’s orbital altitude decays with time to comprehensively sample the lunar magnetic anomalies for further insights on the Moon’s magnetism.