Unpacking Lunar Ice

—Kevin Stacey

Study suggests ice on lunar south pole may have more than one source

FUTURE EXPLORERS ON the Moon will need more information about resources available for fuel and other purposes, and research from planetary scientists at Brown could provide important clues.

The researchers' discoveries about the age and sources of water ice on the Moon are expected to help both basic science and exploration planning. The majority of the reported ice was found within large craters dating back about 3.1 billion years or longer, but the researchers also found evidence of ice in smaller craters that appear to be relatively recent.

“That was a surprise,” said Ariel Deutsch PhD ’20, the study’s lead author. “There hadn’t really been any observations of ice in younger cold traps before.”

“The ages of these deposits can potentially tell us something about the origin of the ice, which helps us understand the sources and distribution of water in the inner solar system,” Deutsch said. “We need to understand the distributions of these deposits to figure out how best to access them.”

The Moon’s Shackleton Crater appears to be home to deposits of water ice.

Photograph by NASA/gsfc/Arizona State University

After receiving her PhD, Deutsch became a postdoctoral fellow at the NASA Ames Research Center to help further study the ice deposits.

The study, published in the journal Icarus, continues Brown’s long ties to NASA and planetary research. Deutsch worked with Brown professor James Head PhD ’69 and Gregory Neumann PhD ’93 from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Head said, “When we think about sending humans back to the Moon for long-term exploration, we need to know what resources are there that we can count on, and we currently don’t know. Studies like this one help us make predictions about where we need to go to answer those questions.”