Moltke (crater)
lunar crater
Moltke is a lunar impact crater near the southern edge of the Mare Tranquillitatis. It is a small, bowl-shaped crater surrounded by a bright halo of higher-albedo material. Just to the south lies the rille system named Rimae Hypatia. These follow a course running roughly east-southeast to west-northwest, and have a length of approximately 180 kilometers.
About 50 kilometers to the northwest of this crater is Tranquility Base, the 1969 landing site of Apollo 11.
The crater is named after German army general and author Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (1800–1891). Its designation was formally adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1935.
Satellite craters
By convention these features are identified on lunar maps by placing the letter on the side of the crater midpoint that is closest to Moltke.
Moltke B was informally called Little Moltke by the Apollo 10 and Apollo 11 crews.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Moltke (crater)” as lunar crater. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q620980. Authority coordinates are -0.590, 24.160. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1800, 1891 and 1935.
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This entry incorporates text from “Moltke (crater)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.