Other
Scientific paper
May 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...210.7103t&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society Meeting 210, #71.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.178
Other
Scientific paper
The Moon possesses an extremely small tilt of its rotation axis relative to the plane of its orbit. Near the poles impact craters and other topographic lows are permanently shaded from the Sun. While lunar polar temperatures have not yet been directly measured, thermal models show maximum surface temperatures of less than 60 K are likely common, and 25 K is possible, potentially allowing cold trapping of volatiles. There are many potential sources of lunar polar volatiles. These include solar wind hydrogen, comets, wet asteroids, interplanetary dust particles, interstellar molecular clouds, the Earth, and the Moon itself. Emplacement mechanisms are direct impact into the poles and ballistic random walk of molecules with trapping prior to escape. Loss mechanisms are dominated by Lyman-alpha ultraviolet radiation and micrometeorite vaporization and remobilization. Preservation mechanisms are thermal diffusion into the regolith where temperatures and diffusivities permit, burial by meteorite impact, and chemical processing to hydrated minerals or organics. This menagerie of sources and processes suggests a complex and highly interesting volatile deposit at the poles regardless of its economic value. Landed experiments that sample the polar regolith in various ways are virtually certain to yield interesting results, and may yield insights into the volatile history of the Earth-Moon system, the chemical composition of comets, and the physics and chemistry of interactions at the surfaces of regolith grains. This work is supported by NASA.
Jeffrey Taylor G.
Lucey Paul G.
Schorghofer Norbert
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