Data from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) on board NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft indicates that ice may make up as much as 22 per cent of the surface material in a crater located on the south pole of the moon.
Using the laser altimeter, a team of NASA and university scientists examined the floor of the Shackleton crater, which is named after the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. They found the crater's floor is brighter than those of other nearby craters, which is consistent with the presence of small amounts of ice.
In addition to the possible evidence of ice, the group's map of the Shackleton revealed a remarkably preserved crater that has remained relatively unscathed since its formation more than three billion years ago. The crater's floor is pocked with several small craters, which may have formed as part of the collision that created it.
The LOLA instrument itself pulses a single laser through a Diffractive Optical Element (DOE) to produce five beams that illuminate the lunar surface. For each beam, LOLA measures time of flight, surface roughness and surface reflectance.
The image above shows the elevation (left) and shaded relief (right) image of the 21-km-diameter Shackleton crater. The structure of the crater's interior was revealed by a digital elevation model constructed from over 5 million elevation measurements from the LOLA instrument.
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