Lunar Surface Rough Enough to Provide Shade for Ice

Last year’s discovery of water in non-polar regions of the Moon has led scientists to understand the mechanisms that create shade in the rough terrain.

IMAGE: The Moon is covered with craters and rocks, creating a surface “roughness” that casts shadows, as seen in this photograph from the 1972 Apollo 17 mission. These cold shadows may allow water ice to accumulate as frost even at daytime. The area of detail is highlighted in the following illustration. CREDIT: NASA

The Moon is a rock in space without an atmosphere, and yet, it continues to fascinate us. So much so that we’re planning to send humans back to the Moon with the Artemis mission, and as we’ve discussed with recent Mars research, one area of interest is whether or not there is accessible water on the Moon.

Accessibility is the key.

When I was growing up, we thought the Moon was basically just that rock, floating in space, not much else to offer. Interesting, but we’d been there, and it didn’t really provide much in the way of resources we could use here. Then in 2008, the Chandrayaan-1 orbiter and its Moon Mineralogical Mapper instrument found water ice inside the polar craters of the Moon. The orbiter also had an impact probe that detected water molecules in the exosphere. That was kind of big news.

A year later, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launched, and it used its upper stage rocket to smack into a crater at the Moon’s south pole, and then flew an impact probe called LCROSS through the debris plume. Sensors on the probe…