A new study using the now-defunct Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has put together the first detailed full-scale map of water distribution on the Moon. SOFIA was a joint project of NASA and the German Space Agency at DLR.
With clear, identifiable lunar features marked by water data, the study provides hints about how water may move across the moon’s surface, particularly near its south pole – an important area for space exploration.
The new map covers about one-quarter of the moon’s Earth-facing side below 60 degrees latitude and extends all the way to the moon’s south pole. Because of the large region covered, scientists could easily identify how water relates to surface features on the moon, avoiding sunlight and favoring cool regions.
“Looking at the water data, we can actually see crater rims, we can see individual mountain ranges, and we can even see differences between the day and night sides of the mountains due to the higher concentration of water in those places,” he said. Bill Reach, director of the SOFIA Science Center at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and lead author of the study, which was presented at the 2023 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
In late 2024, NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) will land in the area surveyed by SOFIA atop Mons Mouton to conduct the first extraterrestrial resource mapping mission. The moon’s flat-topped mountain will be an area of ​​focus in the next paper by the team that led the current study of the SOFIA data.
This current finding, along with two previous SOFIA results on the amount and distribution of water on the moon’s sunlit surface, traces the unique light signature of water. Other missions observing wide areas of the lunar surface have studied different wavelengths of light that cannot distinguish water from similar molecules such as hydroxyl. Moon water is present in the soil and can be found as ice crystals or as water molecules chemically bound to other materials.
Instead of determining the absolute amount of water in the region, the researchers compared data collected around the moon’s south pole to a relatively dry reference region near the moon’s equator to see how the amount changes. Water was found in greater concentrations on the shadowed sides of craters and mountains, much like skiers on Earth know that slopes that receive less direct sunlight will retain snow longer. This suggests that the local geography of the Moon plays an important role in the amount of water present.
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