Thermal prospecting for lunar water with a percussive hot cone penetrometer

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-1-2025

Department

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; Department of Chemical Engineering

Abstract

Water is a resource that is critical for establishing a sustained presence on the moon and beyond. With the orbital discovery of water deposits in the polar permanently shadowed regions of the moon, it is proposed that water and other resources can be extracted and refined on the lunar surface rather than having to transport them from earth, a concept known as in-situ resource utilization. However, the spatial distribution, quantity, and composition of these resource deposits are largely unknown and require ground truth measurements for confirmation. Multiple instruments have been developed to quantify and map lunar resources, but many of them are mechanically complex and have considerable depth limitations. To address these issues, the Planetary Surface Technology Development Lab at Michigan Technological University has developed the Percussive Hot Cone Penetrometer (PHCP), a low mass, mechanically simple, and robust instrument for quantifying the vertical and lateral distribution of geotechnical properties and volatile content of regolith up to a 1 m depth. The PHCP uses a thermal volatile detection system to characterize the frozen volatiles present in volatile-bearing regolith. To assess the sensitivity of the PHCP's thermal volatile detection system, it was tested under thermal vacuum using granular icy regolith mixtures with ice concentrations ranging from 1.5 – 10 wt% water ice. Statistical analysis of the resulting thermal data revealed that the PHCP can quantify the water content of regolith within ± 1 wt% if the bulk density of the surrounding regolith is known within ± 0.05 g/cm3.

Publication Title

Advances in Space Research

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