Lunar South Pole Region

Assembled from 13 blocks · 1 evidence · 8 related

1. Story
2. The terrain poleward of roughly 84°S, and the target region for Artemis surface missions. Because the Moon's spin axis is tilted only about 1.5° to the ecliptic, the Sun never rises far above the horizon here: some crater floors have been in permanent shadow for billions of years and act as cold traps for water and other volatiles, while a few rim high points receive sunlight for most of the lunar year, offering near-continuous solar power and mild thermal swings that no equatorial site can match. Apollo could not go there. With a free-return trajectory, an equatorial Earth parking orbit and a lunar-orbit rendezvous plane that had to match the orbiting command module, high-latitude sites cost extra propellant and closed off abort options, so Apollo landings stayed within about 26° of the equator. Artemis stages through a lander launched separately from the crew vehicle and is not bound by Apollo's free-return and rendezvous-plane constraints, making the poles reachable.
3. Knowledge
4. Lunar South Pole Region
5. Connections
6. Shackleton Crater
7. Cabeus Crater
8. Lunar Water Ice
9. LCROSS Centaur impacts the permanently shadowed floor of Cabeus crater
10. NASA narrows candidate south polar landing regions to nine
11. Artemis IV first crewed lunar south pole landing (planned)
12. Evidence
13. Narrows the candidate south polar landing regions from thirteen to nine, including Peak near Cabeus B, Haworth, Malapert Massif, Mons Mouton and the Nobile Rim sites, and states the selection criteria of shadowed-terrain access, sunlight for power, terrain slope and Earth communications.