As ice reflects more ultraviolet light at certain wavelengths than the Moon\u2019s rocky surface does, Prof. Oded Aharonson and his collaborators, Prof. Paul Hayne from Boulder and Norbert Sch\u00f6rghofer from Honolulu, used ultraviolet data from NASA\u2019s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to map craters with the most ice.<\/p>\n
Data from the orbiter\u2019s Laser Altimeter and the Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project was used to make the animation below, in which the permanently shadowed craters are colored white and light blue and the Moon\u2019s South Pole is indicated by the black arrow.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\tBy signing up, you agree to the terms<\/a><\/p>\n They then combined the findings with geometric calculations.<\/p>\n While the Earth rotates on a tilted axis and the Sun\u2019s position in the sky changes throughout the year, the Moon has \u201cstraightened up\u201d over billions of years, so sunlight cannot reach and warm the deep, steep craters at the lunar poles. They remain in permanent shadow.<\/p>\n \u201cWe found that the earlier a region became shadowed, the larger the area that was able to accumulate ice,\u201d said Aharonson. \u201cThis trend began at least 1.5 billion years ago and has continued even over the past 100 million years. This suggests that ice has been building up on the Moon from a nearly continuous source \u2013 or sources \u2013 rather than through a single event such as a large comet impact.\u201d<\/p>\n If harvested, this ice could theoretically be processed into drinking and irrigation water, split into rocket fuel for deep-space travel, and even used to probe the history of celestial bodies.<\/p>\n \t The discovery will likely further NASA\u2019s goal of creating a permanent manned base on the Moon, and possibly, one day, a transit point to Mars.<\/p>\n Locating and sampling lunar ice is one of the primary goals of NASA\u2019s future crewed Artemis missions, scheduled to land astronauts at the Moon\u2019s South Pole.<\/p>\n The study identifies several high-priority targets near the Moon\u2019s South Pole that are more than 3.3 billion years old. These sites maintain a stable temperature of around -160\u00b0C (-256\u00b0F), ensuring the ice remains frozen and accessible for future explorers.<\/p>\n The last humans to walk on the Moon did so in 1972 with Apollo 17.<\/p>\n
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