Lunar Cold Trap Contamination by Landing Vehicles

The emerging interest in lunar mining poses a threat of contamination to pristine craters at the lunar poles, which act as “cold traps” for water and may harbor other valuable minerals. The KSC Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Lab tools have been expanded to address the probability for contamination of these pristine “cold trap” craters. Trajectory simulations of rocket plume ejecta have been mapped onto cold trap craters to predict deposition for expected lunar landings. The processes addressed are now expanded to address the migration of volatiles over the lunar surface, and deposition into cold traps assuming that the collection efficiency of the 40K cold trap surfaces is 100%. Landing nearby such a crater will result in the deposition of significant exhaust plume gas into the cold trap portion of the crater, and may also create an unnatural atmosphere over the volatile reservoirs that are to be studied.