Upper limit of ice content at the lunar south pole as revealed by the Earth-based SYISR-FAST bistatic radar system.

• Tác giả: Zhiqing Chen, Feng Ding, Peng Jiang, Mingyuan Li, Honglei Lin, Baiqi Ning, Jinghai Sun, Chi Wang, Yong Wei, Xinan Yue
• Ngôn ngữ: eng
• Thông tin xuất bản: Netherlands : Science bulletin , 2025
• Bộ sưu tập: NCBI
• ID: 696172

Tóm tắt

An increasing amount of evidence indicates that lunar water ice exists in permanently shadowed regions at the poles and will soon become an important resource for lunar exploration. However, the water ice content and distribution are still uncertain. We report a new 70-cm-wavelength radar image of the lunar south pole obtained by an Earth-based bistatic radar system consisting of the Sanya incoherent scatter radar (SYISR) and the five-hundred-meter aperture spherical radio telescope (FAST). The upper limit of water ice content (0 wt.%-6 wt.%) and its potential distribution are determined from a radar circular polarization ratio (CPR) map by considering the coherent backscatter opposition effect (CBOE) of water ice and ignoring the contribution of roughness to the CPR. This result is advantageous for future lunar exploration missions.