Named in honor of Alexandr T. Basilevsky {1937– }, a planetary geologist at the Vernadsky Institute, Moscow. Basilevsky has worked for the U.S.S.R. Geological Survey on mapping the central part of the Russian platform, and for the Space Research Institute of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences on potential landing sites for the Lunakhod 1 and 2 probes and the Luna 16, 20 and 24 probes, which returned lunar rock samples to the Earth. He was involved in the photogeological analysis of television images from the Mars 4 and 5 and the Venera 9, 10, 13 and 14 missions. An expert on impact cratering, Basilevsky is a coauthor of the book “;Impact Craters on the Moon and Planets”. He has recently worked on the interpretation of Venera 15 and 16 images of Venus. (M 16042) _ _.