Mapping Hydrogen to Locate Water on the Moon

Friday, March 31, 2017 - 10:01 in Astronomy & Space

Technology Infused: The Lunar polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map) mission is a CubeSat that will detect the amount of hydrogen at the moon’s South Pole. LunaH-Map Spacecraft Design (cutaway views). Designed to fly around the moon in a polar orbit at low altitude (5-12 km), LunaH-Map will carry two newly designed neutron spectrometers to produce highresolution maps of near-surface hydrogen. Previous moon missions have indicated that there is an abundance of hydrogen near the lunar poles, but the exact locations were not determined. The presence of hydrogen indicates the presence of water, and LunaHMap will provide important constraints on the location and abundance of ice deposits near the lunar South Pole. The spectrometers on LunaH-Map will measure the energies of neutrons that have interacted with and subsequently leaked back out of the material in the top meter of the lunar surface. To accomplish this task, the mission will employ new technology—an elpasolite scintillation detector—in...

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