Ice Ice Maybe: New Ways to Search for Frozen Water on the Moon

The three scientists are part of the larger Geophysical Exploration of the Dynamics and Evolution of the Solar System (GEODES) team, a NASA-funded project that uses geophysics methods to investigate the moon, near-Earth asteroids, and the moons of Mars to enable ground exploration. Schmerr is the GEODES principal investigator, Siegler is the ice deposits lead, and Lisabeth is an affiliate researcher focused on regolith. In his role at Berkeley Lab, Lisabeth often uses the ALS to characterize rocks and other materials under conditions mimicking the Earth's subsurface to gain insights that help inform development of geothermal energy and carbon storage systems.

When the Artemis program began, he saw the need for an experimental capability like FROST, as finding water will be one of the first priorities for a long-term presence on the moon. Lisabeth, with Dula Parkinson and Harold Barnard at the ALS, was awarded funding from Berkeley Lab's Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program to design and construct FROST in 2023. Since then, the chamber has been used in several other studies on water transport and thermal properties of regolith and to investigate dynamics of glaciers on Earth.

"Our work is to make measurements and help learn the fundamental geophysics for the moon and other bodies, so we can make sure we have the best models," said Lisabeth. "Because when you're researching in the field, if you don't have ground truth, you're never going to understand what's happening a hundred meters down or three kilometers down."

"It is exciting that we may soon be able to test out models with not-too-distant future data coming from the instruments on VIPER," said Siegler. "This lander has a percussive drill that makes seismic waves as it digs samples, and onboard sensors to measure how short frequency waves propagate underneath it. VIPER's other tools can detect ice in the upper meter of the lunar soil, but these seismic waves might let us detect ice much deeper. These experiments will give us a first glimpse of near-surface properties on the moon."

This work was also supported by NASA and the DOE Office of Science.

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