The Average Water Concentration within Cabeus Crater: Inferences from LRO/Diviner, LCROSS and Lunar Prospector

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[5422] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Ices, [5462] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Polar Regions, [5470] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Surface Materials And Properties, [6250] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Moon

Scientific paper

The Lunar Prospector Neutron Spectrometer (LPNS) first revealed that Cabeus crater (84.9°S, 35.5°W) has the highest inferred hydrogen concentration on the Moon. Because of the smearing due to the LPNS footprint (~40 km FWHM), the apparent peak water-equivalent hydrogen concentration is only ~0.2 wt%. The actual concentrations may be much higher, if confined to smaller areas. Earlier image reconstruction work carried out by Eke et al (2009) and Teodoro et al (2010) suggested that, if areas within permanent shadow were permitted to have excess hydrogen (ice), the abundance could be ~1 wt% WEH there. LRO/Diviner data revealed that very cold surface temperatures, < 100K, prevailed over extensive areas outside those in strict permanent shadow (Paige et al, 2010), and their modeling of subsurface temperatures could be much lower. We relaxed the permanent shadow constraint and permitted enhanced hydrogen in regions with mean subsurface temperatures of 110K or less. The resulting abundances in Cabeus, at and near the LCROSS impact site in permanent shadow, need be no larger than 0.2 wt% in this case. However, the LCROSS impact yielded total water estimates, ice plus vapor, of between 3 and 10 wt% (Colaprete et al., 2010). Such large values imply that either (1) the ice is deeply buried, by perhaps as much as 50 to 100 cm; and/or (2) the ice distribution within Cabeus is spatially inhomogeneous. Here we explore plausible ranges of abundance and burial permitted by the data.

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