2023-08-22 06:00:00
Getty Images The south pole of the Moon has one of the oldest craters in the Solar System.
The Sun is just slightly above the horizon and the towering mountains cast dark shadows.
The craters provide a haven of infinite darkness, with some depths cut off from sunlight for billions of years.
In these regions temperatures plummet to lows down to -248ºC because the Moon lacks an atmosphere to heat the surface.
No human being has set foot in this completely unexplored world.
The South Pole of the Moon, according to NASA, is full of “mystery, science and intrigue”.
It is not surprising that there is a space race to reach that area far from the Apollo moon landing sites, which are concentrated on the satellite’s equator.
in search of water
This week, India plans to land its Chandrayaan-3 robotic probe near the South Pole, after Russia’s Luna-25 will crash into the lunar surface on Sunday.
India also plans for 2026 the joint Lunar Polar Exploration (Lupex) mission with Japan to probe the regions of the “dark side of the Moon”.
Why is the South Pole emerging as an attractive scientific destination? Experts say that water is one of the keys.
ISRO This image sent back by Chandrayaan-3 shows craters on the lunar surface.
Data collected by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a NASA spacecraft that has been orbiting the Moon for 14 years, suggests that there is ice in some of the big craters isolated from light that could potentially supply humans in the future.
Water only exists in a solid or gaseous form due to the vacuum on the Moon, which lacks enough gravity to maintain an atmosphere. India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission was the first to find evidence of water on the satellite in 2008.
“That ice has not yet been shown to be accessible or exploitable. In other words, are there water reserves that can be extracted economically?” says Clive Neal, a professor of planetary geology at the University of Notre Dame in the US.
For scientists, the prospect of finding water on the Moon is hopeful in many ways.
Frozen water uncontaminated by radiation from the Sun could have clumped together over millions of years in cold polar regions, causing ice to build up on or near the surface.
This would provide a unique sample for scientists to analyze and understand the history of water in our solar system.
“We can address questions like when did the water come from where and what are its implications for the evolution of life on Earth,” explains Simeon Barber, a planetary scientist at the UK’s Open University who also works with the European Space Agency.
one million per kilo
There are also other, more “pragmatic” reasons for accessing water on or just below the Moon’s surface, Professor Barber says.
ROSCOSMOS The rocket carrying the Luna-25 lunar landing spacecraft lifted off from a launch pad in Russia on August 11.
Many countries are planning new manned missions to the Moon and astronauts will need water for consumption and sanitation.
Transporting materials from Earth to the Moon requires overcoming Earth’s gravitational pull. Carrying greater weight requires more fuel and more powerful rockets to achieve a successful landing on the Moon. New commercial space companies charge about US$1 million for carrying a kilogram of payload said Luna.
“That’s $1 million per liter of drinking water! Space entrepreneurs certainly see lunar ice as an opportunity to supply astronauts with locally sourced water,” says Professor Barber.
And that’s not all. Water molecules can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen atoms that are used as rocket propellants.
But first, scientists need to know how much ice there is on the Moon, in what forms, and whether it can be efficiently extracted and purified as drinking water.
On the other hand, some areas of the south pole receive sunlight for long periods of time, up to 200 Earth days of constant illumination.
“Solar energy is another potential resource pole has” to establish a lunar base and power equipment, says Noah Petro, project scientist at NASA.
The race
The lunar south pole also lies on the rim of a massive impact crater. With a diameter of 2,500 km and depths of up to 8 km, this huge hole is one of the oldest in the solar system. “By landing at the pole, you can begin to understand the magnitude of this large crater,” says Petro.
Getty Images The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a NASA spacecraft, has been orbiting the Moon for 14 years.
Navigating the pole with lunar rovers, spacesuits, and research tools in a different light and thermal environment than previously explored equatorial sites also promises to yield valuable information.
However, scientists are reluctant to call this a race to the south pole.
“These missions have been decades in the making and have been delayed many times over. The run is not critical to our understanding of the Moon. The last time there was a real space race we ended up losing interest. on the moon after three years and we haven’t been back to the surface for five decades,” said Vishnu Reddy, a professor of planetary sciences at the University of Arizona.
The Indian and Russian missions also had some common goals, the scientists note.
Both set the goal of landing spacecraft of a similar size in the south polar region, further south of the equator than any previous lunar mission.
After a failed landing attempt in 2019, India will try to demonstrate its ability to take a spacecraft to the polar zone of the Moon.
It also aims examine the exosphere of the satellite – an extremely thin atmosphere – and analyze polar regolith, a deposit of loose particles and dust accumulated over billions of years that rest on bedrock.
The Luna-25 mission has among its objectives to analyze the composition of the polar regolith, as well as the elements of plasma and dust of the exosphere of the lunar pole.
NASA NASA’s Artemis program aims to return astronauts to the Moon more than half a century after the last Apollo mission.
To be sure, the Indian orbiter’s landing site is “a bit far from the actual pole”, although the data it will provide “will be fascinating”, predicts Professor Neal.
Russia and China plan to build a lunar space station to establish research facilities on the surface of the Moonen orbit or en both.
Russia is planning more missions to the moon, while NASA is sending materials in commercial landers.
Japan, for its part, is preparing to send a smart lander (the SLIM mission) on August 26, a small-scale mission to test the precise lunar landing techniques of a small rover.
And, of course, NASA’s Artemis program aims to return astronauts to the Moon in a series of space flights more than half a century after the last Apollo mission.
For Petro, the Moon “is like a giant puzzle. We have some of the pieces based on samples and data from lunar meteorites. We have a picture of what the Moon looks like, but it’s incomplete.”
“The Moon continues to surprise us,” he says.
BBC
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