The polar regions of Mars as well as the ice-covered moons such as Saturn's Enceladus and Jupiter's Europa have emerged as significant targets for ongoing and future space missions focused on investigating potentially habitable celestial bodies within our solar system. A key objective of these missions is to explore subglacial water reservoirs lying beneath the ice crusts of moons, such as Europa. The utilization of melting probes shows immense promise for achieving this goal. However, in addition to the capability to melt through the ice body, such a probe must also be able to identify the ice-water interface as well as obstacles in its path, such as cavities or meteoric rocks. To address these challenges, we present a forefield reconnaissance system (FRS) featuring a hybrid sensing approach that combines radar and sonar both integrated into the tip of a melting probe. Furthermore, the system includes an in situ permittivity sensor to ensure accurate radar range assignment and to gather scientific data about the ice body. The system has been integrated into a demonstrator melting probe and tested in a terrestrial analog scenario. Measurements at the Jungfraufirn in Switzerland confirm the potential of the developed system.

In China's Chang'e 7 mission, a miniflyer will be carried for in-situ water ice measurement in permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) around the lunar south pole. The extreme cold environment within PSRs causes serious challenges for the safety of the miniflyer. Predication of temperatures in PSR is critical for designing the internal heating system and the heat source capacity. Conducting in-situ detection mission in relatively warm temperature can reduce the threat of the cold environment and save energy to maintain a suitable operation temperature for payloads. Since the polar-orbiting satellite lunar reconnaissance orbiter passes over the same location in the polar region with intervals of about a month, the temporally continuous observation is unavailable. Simulation is necessary to determine the temporally continuous temperatures of PSR during the mission. In this article, a numerical model of the temperatures in PSR is presented. The ray tracing approach is used to calculate the shadowing effect of terrain on scattered sunlight and thermal radiation. The PSR temperatures are simulated with the one-dimensional heat conduction equation. Simulated temperatures are compared with Diviner data for validation. The spatial and temporal temperature distributions of PSRs in crater Shackleton, which is the preferred landing site for the Chang'e 7 mission, are simulated from 2026 to 2028. The simulated temperature in high temporal resolution of one Earth hour can be applied to analyzing diurnal and seasonal temperatures in PSRs and is helpful for thermal management and design of the internal heating system. The time windows with relatively warm temperature in PSR at regions with slope angles less than 5(degrees) are recommended to save energy and reduce the hazards of the extremely cold environment.