Lunar Near-Surface Volatile Sample Return

TL;DR

This paper advocates for a lunar volatile sample return from polar cold traps to study the Moon's ancient atmosphere and volatile distribution, addressing key open questions about lunar volatiles and their origins.

Contribution

It proposes that sample return missions targeting lunar polar cold traps are essential for understanding lunar volatiles and the Moon's atmospheric history.

Findings

Volatiles in polar cold traps can reveal the Moon's atmospheric history.

Sample return is crucial for studying primordial lunar volatiles.

Understanding lunar volatiles informs lunar evolution and resource potential.

Abstract

The origin, distribution, depth and volume of lunar volatiles remain open questions. One of the possible sources of Moon's volatiles is their volcanic outgassing during the peak of lunar volcanic activity ~3.5 Ga. This same outgassing would also produce a tenuous transient atmosphere which would promote the delivery of volatiles from the volcanic sources to the polar cold traps. Though such an atmosphere could have played an important role in the evolution of the Moon, little is known about it due to high uncertainty level in the mechanisms involved. The only reliable proxy for the ancient lunar atmosphere are the primordial volatiles deposited by it, which are expected to be preserved in the polar cold traps, and could be studied through sample return. In this white paper we therefore advocate that a volatile sample return from the Moon's polar cold traps should be a fundamental part of the Artemis program.