by The call from the moon is clear – try to find my water ice.
It’s likely that there could be oodles of water ice lurking at the bottom of the moon’s south polar craters.
Forgive the cosmic colloquialism but the wonderful-cold features – “where the sun don’t shine” – they are tagged as permanently shaded regions or PSRs. These cold traps for the south pole, if filled with tons of water ice, are great for restoring that resource into drinkable water, oxygen , even rocket fuel.
It is estimated that between two tons and 60 tons of surface water were charted by NASA’s Lyman Alpha Orbiter Lunar Exploration Mapping Project, dumping temp tonnage right there on the floors of permanently shadowed south polar craters. LAMP’s main mission is to find water ice in deep polar craters.
But new research is worrying.
Contamination of goods
Could human landing systems affect the moon deliver water from their rocket exhaust plumes, and in that way pollute the green, nature nectar?
A newly published research paper – “Possible Anthropogenic Contributions to the Surface Icy Regolith Observed on LAMP within Bright Polar Craters: A Comparison of Apollo and Starship Captures” – looks at such consequences.
Published in The Planetary Science Journal, this study is led by Bill Farrell, a senior research scientist in Columbia, Maryland for the Space Science Institute.
Native water
As shown in the research, the SpaceX Starship, chosen by NASA it could be a rocket ruckus as far as native water ice is concerned to plop down on the moon Artemis on the lunar surface.
The IS Starship Landing plumes, the paper notes, in some cases have the potential to deliver over 10 tonnes of water to the PSRs.
“This anthropogenic contribution may overlay and mix with the naturally occurring glacial regolith on the upper surface,” the report states. “A possible consequence is that the origin of the intrinsic surface ice religion, which is still uncertain, could be lost as it is mixed with the extrinsic anthropogenic contribution.”
Apollo landing
The research paper also looked at human activity in the past, such as the Apollo lunar module landings. Could those discharge plumes from the historic landings be some or all of the PSR surface water now being observed by the LAMP aboard the Lunar Exploration Orbit?
The answer is no, the research team found. Those Apollo landings provided only a very small amount, less than 1% of the surface water in PSRs. That’s a discontinuous fraction of water for the intrinsic PSR surface water, they report.
“However, Starship landings in the south polar region have the potential to add significant amounts of water to the PSRs, possibly exceeding the mass of current surface ice in the PSRs over as few as four landings,” the paper says.
An output is that naturally occurring water veneers in PSRs are expected to be altered (cloudy/mixed) by starship landings. “The additional anthropogenic water mass deposited on the surface of the PSRs may provide the ability to understand the origin of the intrinsic, naturally occurring surface glacial regolith,” the scientists suggested.
Explore the effect
Farrell and his colleagues suggest using existing and future orbital and ground assets to explore the effect of polar landings on the cold traps within PSRs.
One suggestion is to scrutinize assets currently in orbit on the south polar PSRs before and after Starship’s polar landings. That collected data could determine the effect of the rocket’s landing on the icy regolith of the natural interior surface.
Prior to the first manned Artemis landing (now known as Artemis 3), Starship would perform a demonstration landing, and lunar orbit assets could monitor the effects of this landing on the PSRs.
The truth of the land
RELATED STORIES:
— Can NASA’s Artemis moon missions rely on using lunar water ice?
— The moon once had more water than we ever imagined, says a lunar meteorite
— Incredible new moon images show Artemis 3 landing site near moon’s south pole (photos)
As for a “ground truth” look, the yet-to-fly NASA Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) may be circling to examine the Starship’s water delivery.
VIPER and its array of instruments should be on duty, a touch pre-Starship. VIPER could provide the first-ever on-site PSR “trapping ratio” using the local engine chemistry released by a Starship during landing as a known source, the paper says.
The paper “Possible Anthropogenic Contributions to the Surface Icy Regolith Observed on LAMP within Lunar Polar Craters: A Comparison of Apollo and Starship Landings,” can be found here.
