Ice on Moon

A crater on the moon that is a prime target for human exploration may be tantalizingly rich in ice, though researchers warn it could just as well hold none at all.

The scientists investigatedShackleton Crater, which sits almost directly on the moon's south pole. The crater, named after the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, is more than 12 miles wide (19 kilometers) and 2 miles deep (3 km) — about as deep as Earth's oceans.

The interiors of polar craters on the moon are in nearly perpetual darkness, making them cold traps that researchers have long suspected might be home to vast amounts of frozen water and thus key candidates for human exploration. However, previous orbital and Earth-based observations of lunar craters have yielded conflicting interpretations over whether ice is there.

This shaded relief image shows the moon's Shackleton Crater, a 21-km-wide crater permanently shadowed crater near the lunar south pole. The crater’s interior structure is shown in false color based on data from NASA's LRO probe. Image released June 20, 2012.
CREDIT: NASA/GSFC/SVS 

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter essentially illuminated the crater's interior with infrared laser light, measuring how reflective it was. The crater's floor is more reflective than that of other nearby craters, suggesting it had ice.

This uncertainty is due in part to what the researchers saw in the rest of the crater. Bizarrely, while the crater's floor was relatively bright, Zuber and her colleagues observed that its walls were even more reflective.

Scientists had thought that if highly reflective ice were anywhere in a crater, it would be on the floor, which live in nearly permanent darkness. In comparison, the walls of Shackleton Crater occasionally see daylight, which should evaporate any ice that accumulates.

Source: www.space.com