Are Lunar Penetrating Radar Data So Unusual? Some Relevant Issues About Their Processing and Analysis

We focus on some processing and analysis issues of Lunar Penetrating Radar collected in the Chang'E-4 Chinese lunar mission on the farside of the Moon, in the ancient Van Kármán crater. The rover equipped with the radar system stops frequently and for long times thus recording a lot of duplicated traces. A dedicated strategy to remove redundant data is implemented and successfully applied. Even after complete removal of duplicated traces, peculiar mirror features due to some almost opposite paths of the rover still remain in the radar profile, and must be carefully considered during data interpretation. We further analyze the effectiveness of migration finding that it is not a crucial processing step for the considered dataset both for imaging of reflectors and diffraction focusing. On the other hand, signal attributes can be successfully exploited not only to improve and constrain data interpretation, but also to implement automated reflection picking strategies.