The call from the moon is clear – try to find my water ice.
There’s a possibility that large amounts of water ice could be lurking at the bottom of craters at the Moon’s south pole.
Pardon my cosmic jargon but these extremely cold features – “where Sun “don’t shine” – labeled permanently shadowed regions, or PSRs. These south pole cold traps, if they really are loaded with tons of water ice, would be ideal for converting that resource into drinkable water, oxygen, and even rocket fuel.
It is estimated that between two and 60 tons of surface water have been mapped in total by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Lyman Alpha Mapping Project, and that this amount is enticingly found in the floors of the larger, permanently shadowed south polar craters. LAMP’s primary mission is to find water ice in deep polar craters.
But new research raises a worrying point.
Contaminate goods
Can human landing systems land? moon they release water from their rocket exhausts and thus contaminate these pipes which are locked, naturally nectar?
A newly published research paper – “Possible Anthropogenic Contributions to Surface Icy Regoliths Observed by LAMP within Lunar Polar Craters: Comparison of Apollo and Starship Landings” – takes a look at such implications.
The study, published in The Planetary Science Journal, is led by Bill Farrell, a senior research associate at the Space Science Institute in Columbia, Maryland.
Local water
As stated in the research, SpaceX Starship was selected by NASA Dropping Artemis moonwalkers on the lunar surface could create a rocket mess as far as the local water ice is concerned.
The Starship The downpipe has the potential to deliver more than 10 tonnes of water to the PSRs in some cases, the newspaper notes.
“This anthropogenic contribution could likely overlap and mix with naturally occurring icy regolith at the uppermost surface,” the report says. “One possible outcome is that the origin of the intrinsic surficial icy regolith, which has yet to be determined, may be lost as it mixes with the extrinsic anthropogenic contribution.”
Apollo landings
The research paper also looked at past human activities, such as the Apollo lunar module landings. Could exhaust plumes from these historic landings have expelled some or all of the surface PSR water that LAMP is currently observing? Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter?
The research team found the answer is no. The Apollo landings delivered only a tiny fraction of the surface water in the PSRs, less than 1%. This is a negligible fraction of the PSR’s internal surface water, they report.
“However, Starship landings in the south polar region have the potential to add significant amounts of water to the PSRs, which could exceed the mass of existing surface frost in the PSRs even with just four landings,” the paper said.
One implication is that the naturally occurring water cover in PSRs is expected to be altered (obscured/mixed) by Starship landings. “This additional anthropogenic water mass deposited on the surface of PSRs may reduce or eliminate the ability to understand the origin of the internal, naturally occurring surface icy regolith,” the scientists suggest.
Examine the effect
Farrell and colleagues propose using current and future orbital and ground assets to study the impact of polar landers on cold traps within PSRs.
One suggestion is for assets currently in orbit to study the south polar PSRs both before and after the Starship polar landings. This data collected could determine the impact of the rocket landing on the natural, internal surface icy regolith.
Before the first Artemis human landing (now scripted as Artemis 3), the Starship would make a demonstration landing, and the effects of that landing on the PSRs could be monitored by beings orbiting the moon.
Ground truth
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As for the “real” perspective, NASA’s yet-to-fly Polar Exploration Vehicle for Volatile Substances (VIPER) could fly around to study the water carried by the Starship.
VIPER and its instrument array must be operational before Starship lands. VIPER can provide an in situ PSR “trap ratio” for the first time, using the engine chemistry released by the local Starship upon landing as a known source, the paper says.
The article, “Possible Anthropogenic Contributions to Surface Icy Regoliths Observed by LAMP within Lunar Polar Craters: Comparison of Apollo and Starship Landings” can be found here.