Another permanently shadowed crater on the Moon shows no obvious ice
Note that the bright areas are not ice but simply overexposed
The science team operating the Shadowcam camera on South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter — designed to take images in places with little light — yesterday released a new image taken of the floor of a permanently shadowed crater on the Moon, Hermes-A, located near the north pole.
That picture is to the right. The rectangle indicates the area discussed by the release, focusing entirely on describing its geological features, such as impact melt and the numerous secondary smaller impacts and ejecta within the crater floor. The inset gives the context, showing the crater’s location near the north pole. The blue areas in the inset are those areas thought to be permanently shadowed, such as the entire floor of Hermes-A.
What the release fails to mention is the most important detail lacking in this picture. Though the floor of Hermes-A crater is considered permanently shadowed, the low light image taken by Shadowcam shows no obvious ice features, at all. If there is a higher content of water here, it is locked within the soil, and would require processing to access. Even so, the picture suggests that any such moisture is of extremely low concentration, likely in the parts per billion, and hardly enough to build a lunar base.
This is the same result found by previous Shadowcam pictures. Increasingly it appears that the hope of finding large quantities of easily accessible water ice in these permanently shadowed craters is proving false.
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Note that the bright areas are not ice but simply overexposed
The science team operating the Shadowcam camera on South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter — designed to take images in places with little light — yesterday released a new image taken of the floor of a permanently shadowed crater on the Moon, Hermes-A, located near the north pole.
That picture is to the right. The rectangle indicates the area discussed by the release, focusing entirely on describing its geological features, such as impact melt and the numerous secondary smaller impacts and ejecta within the crater floor. The inset gives the context, showing the crater’s location near the north pole. The blue areas in the inset are those areas thought to be permanently shadowed, such as the entire floor of Hermes-A.
What the release fails to mention is the most important detail lacking in this picture. Though the floor of Hermes-A crater is considered permanently shadowed, the low light image taken by Shadowcam shows no obvious ice features, at all. If there is a higher content of water here, it is locked within the soil, and would require processing to access. Even so, the picture suggests that any such moisture is of extremely low concentration, likely in the parts per billion, and hardly enough to build a lunar base.
This is the same result found by previous Shadowcam pictures. Increasingly it appears that the hope of finding large quantities of easily accessible water ice in these permanently shadowed craters is proving false.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Sad news if true. And, of course, only on-site sampling by robots or humans will settle the issue with finality.
But not a surprise either. As anyone familiar with my comment history at this and other sites is aware, I’ve been a skeptic of the “abundant ice at the poles” hypothesis since its origins. No plans for lunar development should be made that are contingent on being able to “live off the land” where water is concerned.
It was an instrumented lunar orbiter that initiated this whole ice-at-the-poles thing in the first place. It will be more than a bit ironic if a second such craft proves the means by which this notion is taken down.
Agreed.
The poles are still valuable for Earth observation…I can imagine a pole with optics all around…. continuous solar energy.
If anti-gravity were real–I’d want that dust for concrete down here.
I think it’s still early to feel much confidence in that conclusion, but I admit that it’s a possibility that has to be seriously considered.
If it is true, there is no getting around the fact that it will inhibit economic development of the Moon in the near-to medium-term. Yes, there will eventually be other ways to make oxygen or propellant out of lunar mineral resources, but those will be more difficult ways, and they will take more time to develop. Having to haul most or all of your oxygen, your water, your propellant up from Earth or some other location is a lot of payload mass and volume that has to be diverted to bulk commodities.
I am not against Elon and his Martian ambitions. But we really need to really explore the nearest neighbor first.
ISS has given us good experience with long term survivability in a vacuum. We can leverage that for long term investigation of the Lunar surface.
Aside from knowledge gained, it will give us surface experience in a hostile environment. Something we will need for Mars.
I wanted to throw my coffee at the TV when Obama said ” we’ve been there”. So short sight, he was. But I also think, deliberately so.