Is there ice on the moon? Scientists spot shiny crater.
A team of MIT researchers found ice may make up 22 percent of the material on the moon's quite bright crater floor.
The area around the moon's Shackleton crater could be a prime site. Scientists have long thought that the crater — whose interior is a permanently sunless abyss — may contain reservoirs of frozen water. But inconsistent observations over the decades have cast doubt on whether ice might indeed exist in the shadowy depths of the crater, which sits at the moon's south pole.
Shackleton crater on the Moon’s south pole has been somewhat of an enigma, as its permanently shadowed interior has made it difficult to detect what is inside. But with new observations using the laser altimeter on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft, a team of researchers has essentially illuminated the crater’s interior with laser light, measuring its albedo, or natural reflectance.
The scientists found that the crater’s floor is quite bright, an observation consistent with the presence of ice. In fact, ice may make up 22 percent of the material on the crater floor, with possibly more ice embedded within the crater walls.
“We decided we would study the living daylights out of this crater,” said Maria Zuber from the Massachuesetts Institute of Technology, who lead a team to study Shackleton Crater. “From the incredible density of observations we were able to make an extremely detailed topographic map.”
For laser altimeter observations, elevation maps can be created by measuring the time it takes for laser light to bounce down to the Moon’s surface and back to the instrument. The longer it takes, the lower the terrain’s elevation. Using these measurements, the group mapped the crater’s floor and the slope of its walls.
The team used over 5 million measurements to create their detailed map.
While the crater’s floor was relatively bright, Zuber and her colleagues observed that its walls were even brighter. The finding was at first puzzling. Scientists had thought that if ice were anywhere in a crater, it would be on the floor, where no direct sunlight penetrates. The upper walls of Shackleton crater are occasionally illuminated, which could evaporate any ice that accumulates.
