LRO‐LAMP Survey of Lunar South Pole Cold Traps: Implication for the Presence of Condensed H₂O

Abstract

The lunar poles contain regions that experience extreme temperature conditions, enabling them to freeze and trap water (Paige, Siegler, et al., 2010;Watson et al., 1961b). Modeling evidence of water delivery to the lunar surface by various mechanisms, such as comet or meteoroid bombardment, solar wind implantation, and outgassing/eruptions have been postulated (e.g.,

LRO‐LAMP Lunar South Pole Cold Traps: Assessment of H2O and Potential CO2 and NH3 Reserves

“…Although data processing efforts consider scattered sunlight and Earthshine, ensuring that scattered light and Earthshine are not a factor is challenging. Therefore, it is possible that increasing Edge‐band and Off‐band albedos with increasing temperature may arise from far‐UV solar illumination (Byron et al., 2019; Magaña et al., 2022) and/or Earthshine. Lastly, we cannot rule out that this trend may result from unidentified systematic effects, or processes not identified here.…”

“…Non‐PSR regions that experience larger temperature swings (and more intense thermal cycling) would therefore have regolith that is more compact, leading to higher albedos. It has been shown that higher porosity regions experience lower albedos (Gladstone et al., 2012; Magaña et al., 2022; Raut et al., 2018). However, we expect porosity effects to be independent of wavelength.…”

“…In this mode, the aperture door is open to maximize the throughput (by a factor of ∼736). In this study, nightside observations of the lunar south pole from the first 7 years of the mission (September 2009 to September 2016) are accumulated and undergo spectral data-filtering processes as described in Magaña et al (2022) to derive hemispheric albedos, which are analyzed further in this study; dayside observations are not utilized.…”

“…The detailed processing steps used to assemble these updated albedo maps (utilizing the expanded illumination model and LAMP data set) analyzed herein are detailed in Magaña et al. (2022).…”

“…These resulted in the improved overall data quality, with a higher signal-to-noise ratio. The detailed processing steps used to assemble these updated albedo maps (utilizing the expanded illumination model and LAMP data set) analyzed herein are detailed in Magaña et al (2022).…”