There are deposits of water ice or "water" rocksMOSCOW, October 11.
/tass/. Scientists have found out that the most interesting landing point for the first expedition under the Artemios lunar program is the Leibniz-Beta plateau, where there are deposits of water ice or "water" rocks. The Russian probe Luna-27 may land in the same region, Maria Dyachkova, a researcher at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), said on Tuesday at the XIII Moscow Symposium on the Study of the Solar System.
"NASA has prepared a list of 13 possible points where the expedition will land as part of the third phase of the Artemis program. We used data from the Russian LEND neutron spectrometer on board the LRO lunar probe to estimate how much water is present in these potential landing zones," Dyachkova said.
NASA announced in the spring of 2019 that the astronaut landing program on the Moon, called Artemis, includes three stages. The first is the launch into space of the Orion spacecraft using the new SLS launch vehicle, which in unpiloted mode will make several orbits around the Moon and return to Earth. The second is a flyby of a natural satellite of the Earth already with a crew on board. At the third stage in 2025, NASA expects to deliver astronauts to the Moon, and then send them to Mars in the mid-2030s.
The third stage of this program, as Dyachkova noted, will take place on the territory of the south pole of the Moon, where extensive ice reserves are potentially hidden in permanently shaded craters. So far, NASA experts have not decided on possible landing points for the expedition, but at the same time they have chosen thirteen of the most interesting regions for this.
The Search for lunar WaterRussian scientists have become interested in which of these corners of the Moon's south pole may contain water, which is important not only for the participants of the Artemis program expeditions, but also for the Russian Luna-27 mission, which is to land in this region of the Earth's natural satellite in 2025 to take samples of lunar soil and rocks.
Guided by these considerations, Dyachkova and her colleagues used data from the LEND neutron spectrometer to select the most "watery" landing site for both Luna-27 and the first expedition of the Artemis program. Their calculations showed that one of the most interesting and at the same time coinciding points for the landing of both missions will be the Leibniz Beta plateau and the edge of the neighboring Nobile crater. The proportion of water in their rocks was about 1.5-2 times higher than in all other studied corners of the south pole of the Moon.
"We don't know which point our colleagues from NASA will choose and what criteria they will be guided by. If they are interested in the search and study of lunar water reserves, then we would recommend choosing the Leibniz Beta plateau or the edge of the Nobile crater. Joint exploration of these regions of the Moon will significantly improve the scientific results of both missions if both go to the moon in 2025," Dyachkova said.
As James Head, a professor at Brown University (USA) and one of the members of the scientific team of the Apollo program, added, the information prepared by his Russian colleagues will certainly interest other researchers involved in the preparation of the Artemis program. These data will help to choose the optimal landing site for both the NASA lunar expedition and the Russian Luna-27, the planetologist summed up.
