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When it comes to lunar exploration, pretty much everything that astronauts discover is exciting. However, there is one area of the Moon that scientists are particularly desperate to explore, and that is the South Pole.
The South Pole of the Moon has previously gone unexplored, because it has proven very difficult for spacecraft to land there. This is beginning to change, however, and scientists are looking forward to finally unraveling the mysteries of the south side of the Moon.
Curious? Check out this gallery to find out more.
Today, lunar exploration is nothing new. Starting with the Apollo missions of the 1960s and '70s, astronauts have been exploring the Moon for decades.
Until 2023, however, there was one area of the Moon that astronauts still had not ventured: its enigmatic South Pole.
The lunar South Pole is, for various reasons, difficult to reach. The Apollo spacecraft of the 20th century, for example, mainly touched down near to the Moon’s equator.
In 2023, however, the lander from India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission successfully touched down 370 miles (600 km) from the lunar South Pole.
The Chandrayaan-3 lander got closer than any other spacecraft has been to the lunar South Pole, and its suitcase-sized rover made some important observations.
In 2025, NASA plans to continue mankind’s exploration of the lunar South Pole by landing astronauts there as part of its Artemis III mission.
These missions represent a huge step forward for mankind’s exploration of the Moon, not least because multiple spacecraft have failed to land on its South Pole in the past.
Just two days before the successful landing of the Indian spacecraft, for example, the Russian Luna-25 failed to land because it spun out of control and crashed.
Prior to that, in 2019, a previous Indian mission failed when the spacecraft failed to land safely near the area targeted by Chandrayaan-3.
The reason it’s so difficult for spacecraft to land on the lunar South Pole is that it’s full of craters and deep trenches. Various Apollo missions have also failed to land there.
Scientists are nonetheless fascinated by the lunar South Pole because they believe it may be home to an abundance of ice, much of which is made of water.
The Moon rotates on a shallow axis, which means that some of the craters at its poles never see sunlight.
Couple this with the low temperatures in these locations, and scientists believe that the presence of ice, either on the surface of the Moon or mixed into the soil, is very likely.
The possibility of finding ice on the Moon is exciting for a number of different reasons. Firstly, it may have a lot to teach us about the distant past.
The discovery of water on the Moon, provided it exists in sufficient quantities, may also have important implications for lunar exploration.
Indeed, it could provide a source of drinking water for astronauts, which is an ongoing challenge, as well as help cool important equipment.
Astronauts may even be able to break the water down in order to produce hydrogen for fuel and oxygen to breathe. This, in turn, could support missions to Mars or lunar mining.
The idea that there may be ice on the Moon is nothing new. In fact, scientists have speculated about the existence of lunar water since before the Apollo missions of the 1960s.
However, when the Apollo crews returned samples for analysis in the late 1960s and early '70s, they appeared to be dry.
It was only when researchers from Brown University revisited those samples in 2008 that the excitement really began to build.
When the Brown researchers looked at the samples, they found hydrogen stored inside tiny beads of volcanic glass.
This was suggestive of water on the Moon, and, sure enough, in 2009 a NASA instrument detected water on the Moon’s surface.
Later in the same year, another NASA instrument that hit the South Pole found water ice below the Moon’s surface.
The main discovery made by the Chandrayaan-3 rover when the mission landed in 2023 was related to the surface temperature of the Moon.
By burying its sensors into the lunar soil as it roamed around, the Pragyaan rover was able to reveal a sharp drop in temperature just below the Moon’s surface.
Indeed, at the surface the rover measured a temperature of around 50°C (120°F). Just 80 mm (3 inches) below this, however, the recorded temperature was -10°C (14°F).
This data was already interesting to scientists, who had not expected such a dramatic drop in temperature below the lunar South Pole’s surface.
However, it is the data provided by future missions that experts are most excited about. In particular, they are keen to learn more about the South Pole’s permanently shadowed regions (PSRs).
These regions are angled in such a way that the Sun’s rays never reach their insides, meaning that they have potentially been storing ice for billions of years.
Sources: (BBC) (NASA) (The World Economic Forum)
See also: Earth has a second moon
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LIFESTYLE Space
When it comes to lunar exploration, pretty much everything that astronauts discover is exciting. However, there is one area of the Moon that scientists are particularly desperate to explore, and that is the South Pole.
The South Pole of the Moon has previously gone unexplored, because it has proven very difficult for spacecraft to land there. This is beginning to change, however, and scientists are looking forward to finally unraveling the mysteries of the south side of the Moon.
Curious? Check out this gallery to find out more.