A catalogue of meter-scale impact craters in the Chang'e-5 landing area measured from centimeter-resolution descent imagery

Chang'e-5 (CE-5) mission, the first lunar sample return mission of China, landed in Northern Oceanus Procellarum (51.92°W, 43.06°N) on Dec. 1, 2020. The descent camera onboard the CE-5 lander collected hundreds of descent images during the landing process. These high-resolution images are used to generate high resolution digital orthophoto map (DOM) and digital elevation model (DEM), providing a data basis for the detailed analysis of the geology and topography of the landing area. Impact craters are the most common landforms on the Moon, and small craters measured from high resolution data are very important for understanding the impacting process and the properties of the lunar surface. In this research, we create a catalogue of small craters measured from the centimeter-resolution image mapping products in the CE-5 landing area, and most of the craters are smaller than 100 m in diameter. The distribution and morphological characteristics of the craters are analyzed, including the completeness diameter, the spatial density distribution and the relationship between depth and diameter. The mean depth-to-diameter ratio of 231 craters with diameters ranging from 7.0 to 371.2 m and depths ranging from 0.21 to 45.9 m in CE-5 landing area is ~0.055. This result indicate that our catalogue has slightly low d/D ratios compared with other larger craters and the small craters in Chang'e-4 landing area.