New Delhi: A new international study involving researchers from the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), IISER and the Institute of Remote Sensing has revealed that water ice deposits in permanently shadowed regions of the Moon are much more stable than previously thought.“The Moon’s permanently shadowed regions (PSR) are capable of preserving water-ice and other frozen volatiles for billions of years if temperatures remain low enough. Water ice is preserved on the PSR of the Moon’s south pole, which has seen many of the impacts. (However,) 74% are unaffected by PSR impacts,” said the study, titled “Impacts in the Moon’s Permanently Shadowed Regions,” which was published in “Nature” in April. 2.The findings come at a time when countries are racing to launch manned missions like the ongoing Artemis II mission to the Moon with the aim of setting up a lunar base in the future and India’s crewed lunar landing mission by 2040.Using high-resolution orbital imagery and impact modeling, the research team mapped millions of small craters ranging from one to 20 meters in size in the PSR between 85° and 90° south latitude. The study also took the help of NASA cameras and data generated by ISRO Chandrayaan-2 orbiter. “In this study, 5 m–7 km diameter craters were mapped within a subset of the PSR over an area over 1 km2 located between 85°–90°S latitude using ShadowCam, 1–20 m craters were mapped within the connecting ridge region near the lunar south pole using both ShadowCam (NASA) and the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter High-Resolution Camera (India) and a Approximate calculations were made,” the study said.The study further said, “Despite millions of impacts in the PSR and the release of volatiles from the crater cavity, the Moon’s south pole region still has the potential to preserve shallow ice, making it a promising target for India’s future Chandrayaan-5/LUPEX mission.”The study suggests that small depressions in these dark areas may have disturbed the ice buried beneath the surface. It also states that in areas without craters, natural surface churning (called “horticulture”) may mix the ice vertically, bringing it closer to the top. This makes such locations good targets for future missions to explore and exploit lunar ice.Chandrayaan mission was the first mission to confirm the presence of water on the Moon. While Chandrayaan-1 (2008) detected lunar water for the first time, Chandrayaan-2 confirmed its stability in the polar regions and Chandrayaan-3 found further evidence of hidden, buried ice, an important step for future exploration. Chandrayaan-5, also known as the Lunar Polar Exploration (LUPEX) mission, is a joint project between ISRO and Japan’s JAXA, scheduled to be launched around 2027-28. It aims to land at the South Pole to detect and analyze water ice by employing a heavy Japanese rover and an Indian lander.