Stability of ice on the Moon with rough topography
["Rubanenko, Lior","Aharonson, Oded"]
2017-11-01
期刊论文
The heat flux incident upon the surface of an airless planetary body is dominated by solar radiation during the day, and by thermal emission from topography at night. Motivated by the close relationship between this heat flux, the surface temperatures, and the stability of volatiles, we consider the effect of the slope distribution on the temperature distribution and hence prevalence of cold-traps, where volatiles may accumulate over geologic time. We develop a thermophysical model accounting for insolation, reflected and emitted radiation, and subsurface conduction, and use it to examine several idealized representations of rough topography. We show how subsurface conduction alters the temperature distribution of bowl-shaped craters compared to predictions given by past analytic models. We model the dependence of cold-traps on crater geometry and quantify the effect that while deeper depressions cast more persistent shadows, they are often too warm to trap water ice due to the smaller sky fraction and increased reflected and reemitted radiation from the walls. In order to calculate the temperature distribution outside craters, we consider rough random surfaces with a Gaussian slope distribution. Using their derived temperatures and additional volatile stability models, we estimate the potential area fraction of stable water ice on Earth's Moon. For example, surfaces with slope RMS similar to 15 degrees (corresponding to length-scales similar to 10 m on the lunar surface) located near the poles are found to have a similar to 10% exposed cold-trap area fraction. In the subsurface, the diffusion barrier created by the overlaying regolith increases this area fraction to similar to 40%. Additionally, some buried water ice is shown to remain stable even beneath temporarily illuminated slopes, making it more readily accessible to future lunar excavation missions. Finally, due to the exponential dependence of stability of ice on temperature, we are able to constrain the maximum thickness of the unstable layer to a few decimeters. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
来源平台:ICARUS