Moon – University of New Mexico And Other Institutions Are Studying Volatile Materials From The South Pole Of The Moon – Part 1 of 3 Parts

Part 1 of 3 Parts
     There is currently a race to return humans to the Moon and to create permanent habitations there. Aside from the problems of getting to the Moon, there will be many challenges to the creation of permanent habitats. The first tasks will be to find a way to utilize materials on the surface of the Moon to construct the habitats. Once the structures are in place, they must be supplied with energy, oxygen and water. Previous missions to the Moon have indicated that there are deposits of ice at a variety of locations. The big question is where the biggest accessible deposits of ice can be found. Currently, researchers are focusing on obtaining water for habits from one of the poles of the Moon.
     Just how cold are the lunar South and North Poles? For comparison, Antarctica’s coastal temperatures average around fourteen degrees Fahrenheit while the interior drops to minus seventy-six degrees Fahrenheit making Earth’s South Pole one of the coldest places on the planet. Recent research indicates that the South Pole of the moon experiences even more extreme temperature fluctuations and freezing conditions.
     New research from The University of New Mexico details the exploring, sampling, and interpreting of lunar volatiles in polar cold temperatures on the moon. The team of researchers surveyed the surface of the moon and analyzed permanently shadowed regions that have temperatures of minus four hundred- and fifty-three-degrees Fahrenheit. Inside these shadowed regions, there are cold ‘traps’ that capture and preserve volatiles, such as water, carbon dioxide, and other elements.
     The University of New Mexico research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Charles Shearer is a research scientist at the Institute of Meteoritics and research professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UNM. He was the lead author, along with UNM’s Zachary Sharp, who co-authored the article, and Julie Stopar at the Lunar and Planetary Institute.
     Shearer explained, “There are potential resources on the moon that could be utilized for human activity on the lunar surface and beyond. We all need water. It could also provide oxygen for humans to breathe, and some of the materials could be used for fuels for transporting humans around the surface of the moon or going beyond the moon.”
      This new research has implications for NASA’s Artemis Lunar mission to return humans to the moon. Artemis I, was launched in November 2022. It carried an unmanned spacecraft that flew past the moon, orbited it, and then returned to Earth.
Artemis II will follow a similar route, this time with humans aboard, orbiting the moon and returning safely to Earth. Artemis III will be the first crewed mission to the moon’s surface since Apollo 17. It will land at the lunar South Pole to explore its surface, collect samples and return to Earth.
     Stopper looked at the orbital data and provided information about the permanently shadowed regions in terms of stability fields. She examined what there could be in terms of volatile materials and temperature ranges, and she showed where permanently shadowed regions are located.The University of New Mexico
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