Other
Scientific paper
Jun 2003
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003psrd.repte..73m&link_type=abstract
Planetary Science Research Discoveries
Other
Moon, Cold Traps, Ice, Permanent Shadows, Lunar Polar Regions, Lunar South Pole, Lunar North Pole
Scientific paper
Water ice is trapped in permanently shadowed areas at the lunar poles. This prediction is consistent with data from the Clementine [see PSRD article: Ice on the Bone Dry Moon] and Lunar Prospector missions and radar measurements with the Arecibo radio telescope. What we know for sure is that concentrations of hydrogen are associated with permanently shadowed craters. We don't know the total concentration of hydrogen or whether or not the hydrogen is surely in water ice or some other form. [See PSRD article: The Moon Beyond 2002.] But researchers are zeroing in on these zones of permanent darkness because knowing their size and distribution would tell us where and how much water ice could be found in cold traps--an obvious advantage for human settlement of the Moon.
Lacking images of the lunar poles through every season, researchers turned to computer simulations to model the illumination of simple craters to watch how the shadows change with time. Ben Bussey (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab) and colleagues (at APL, University of Hawaii, Northwestern University, and Q & D Programming) studied simple craters with diameters less than 20 km and used results from their simulations to predict the minimum amount of permanent shadow in the north and south polar regions. Their predictions, 7500 sq. km around the north pole and 6500 sq. km around the south pole, are significantly larger than any previous estimates.
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