The discovery of ice deposits in craters scattered across the Moon’s south pole has helped to renew interest in exploring the lunar surface, but no one is sure exactly when or how that ice got there.
The discovery of ice deposits in craters scattered across the Moon’s south pole has helped to renew interest in exploring the lunar surface, but no one is sure exactly when or how that ice got there. A new study suggests that while a majority of those deposits are likely billions of years old, some may be more recent.
Ariel Deutsch, a graduate student at Brown University’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences in Providence, Rhode Island and the study’s lead author, says that constraining the ages of the deposits is important both for basic science and for future lunar explorers who might make use of that ice for fuel and other purposes.
“The ages of these deposits can potentially tell us something about the origin of the ice, which helps us understand the sources and distribution of water in the inner solar system,” Deutsch said. “For exploration purposes, we need to understand the lateral and vertical distributions of these deposits to figure out how best to access them. These distributions evolve with time, so having an idea of the age is important.”
Read more at NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center
Image: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured these views of the Lunar South Pole. Credits: NASA/Scientific Visualization Studio
