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Is NASA Planning To "Terraform" Part of the Moon? Not Quite
MarkWhittington writes: A story in Popular Science suggested that NASA is mulling a plan to "terraform" part of the moon. The term is more than a little misleading, as it implies making a portion of the moon livable for humans. The actual plan, being funded by the space agency as part of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program is exciting nevertheless. The idea is to deploy reflectors around the rim of the Shackleton Crater, a region at the moon's South Pole where ice is thought to exist in permanent shadows. The reflectors would focus light onto select areas to provide power for robotic explorers. In this manner, the robots would not have to be equipped with protection against the cold inside the crater and would not have to be powered by plutonium-fueled RTGs. Temperatures inside the shadowed regions of Shackleton plunge to minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit.
I saw that bit - what I didn't see was hard data on where the ice actually is (because nobody knows), or any estimation of what the solar reflection into the crater will do to peak temperatures within the crater. With any luck at all, things won't be getting out of hand, better to try than not to try. But, if we are fortunate and the ice is deposited as thin frost on the cave entrances, we'll have to be careful to charge the rovers a good distance from the caves to avoid sublimating too much away (sublimation point of H2O in hard vacuum is 150K, or -123C / -190F). Even driving a "warm" rover into the cave might start the process...