This is the south pole of the Moon showing the Permanently Shadowed Regions where scientists believe there are large quantities of water ice. The VIPER rover will soon be launched to this area to search, analyze and drill up to one meter into the ice. The VIPER team just announced their targeted search area which is the black rectangle I added to the West of Nobile crater. To be clear, the little black rectangle is the entire search area for the mission. So, I repeat, what's wrong with this picture?
Well the obvious thing wrong is the site is not down in one of the shadowed craters where ice is thought to be present. But there's a reason:
ReplyDeleteThe site needed to have good visibility of the Earth, which will be low on the horizon at the south pole, to enable direct-to-Earth communications, as well as good illumination for the solar-powered rover. The site also needed “trafficable terrain” that the rover could navigate, avoiding steep slopes. Finally, scientists wanted a location that had a variety of terrains that might harbor water ice at or just below the surface
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/viper-decides-where-it-will-land-on-the-moon
The last criteria is the puzzler. They must have more data that show there "might" be water below the surface.
Great comment, thanks!
DeleteI agree, I think they found some small and shallow craters up on the highlands where it's relatively flat.
I guess I’m frustrated at two things. One, for such an important mission, the capabilities and goals of the mission seem very conservative. For example, here is a question and response I posted on the NASA Spaceflight forum:
VIPER has three spectrometers and a meter-long drill. If it locates water ice it can analyze the composition and distribution but what about depth? Apparently, there is no lunar penetrating radar so we will not be able to tell if the rover is sitting on 2 meters of water ice or 20 meters, correct?
NSS uses neutron scattering to estimate the depth to any ice (neutrons interact with hydrogen in a diagnostic manner) - doing the job of radar. I agree a radar would be nice but it's not strictly necessary on this specific mission. I expect we will see one soon on another mission. China has done this already on all three surface missions.
Second, this mission highlights a lack of coordination in lunar exploration. It is still a collection of individual science experiments. For example, VIPER would be much more efficient if we had basic relay communications in elliptical orbit. Unless something changes, we won’t get this until 2024 with the launch of ESA’s Lunar Pathfinder. Of course, the Chinese already have a relay satellite at EML2 for their operations on the farside and are planning a new one for ‘24. Perhaps, there is a third thing I’m frustrated about?