In December 1994, Gene Shoemaker and his team published a paper in the journal Science called "The South Pole Region of the Moon as Seen by Clementine." The paper talked about how the South Pole was the least well-known region of the Moon before the Clementine mission, and how the mission had revealed a lot of new information about it. The work of Westfall and his team helped to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the South Pole, and it made the region more attractive for future exploration. The region was poorly mapped during the Apollo missions in the 1960s, and it was nicknamed "Luna incognita" (Latin for "unknown moon"). In the 1970s and 1980s, a group of amateur astronomers led by John Westfall worked to map the region around the south pole of the Moon. This misconception helped to popularize the idea of the South Pole as a place of eternal light, and this has led to more missions being planned to the South Pole than the North Pole. The true ratio of permanently shadowed area between the south and the north poles is about 1.25:1,” added Linganna.Įxperts point out that the reason why the South Pole is favoured for exploration is because of a historical misconception about the existence of mountains that are always lit by the sun. However, the difference in permanently shadowed area between the two poles is not as great as originally thought. The South Pole has more area in permanent shadow and colder temperatures, so it is thought to have more water ice. “Water ice has been detected at both poles of the Moon. This is because we now have more complete data about the ice resources at both poles. However, the differences in ice resources between the north and south poles are not as great as they once seemed. Linganna points out that ice resources are an important consideration for future missions to the Moon. The South Pole is also a more promising place to look for ice than the North Pole,” he said. This makes the South Pole a geologically interesting place because it is possible that there is material from the deep crust and upper mantle of the Moon on or near the surface. “An additional motivating factor for focusing on the south is that the South Pole is located in the South Pole-Aitken basin, which is a huge crater. There are plenty of places on the North Pole that have good solar visibility,” Girish Linganna, space and aerospace expert told THE WEEK. However, this advantage is not significant enough to make a practical difference. “The South Pole of the moon gets a slight advantage over the North Pole in terms of solar energy. This is because the North Pole has a longer period of sunlight than the South Pole. Of the top 20 sites on the Moon that are illuminated by the sun, seven of them are located near the North Pole. The areas are only lit for about 90 percent of the Moon's 18.6-year nutation cycle. These spots are called "peaks of eternal light" but the light is not eternal and the name is quite misleading. The lunar poles have spots that are always sunny. They are not significant enough to make one pole a better landing site than the other, experts point out. The differences between the poles are very small. They both have highland terrain and a rugged landscape with large, degraded craters and smaller fresher ones. Space experts say that the lunar poles are very similar. In the 1990s, a number of missions to the Moon focused on the South Pole, and this helped to solidify the South Pole as the preferred landing site for future missions. However, the south pole has been favored for exploration due to historical reasons. Why is the South Pole of the moon preferred for moon missions such as Chandrayaan 3 and why are countries such as the US, China and India infatuated for Moon's South Pole and not the North Pole? There are mixed views as few space experts are of the view that the South Pole has more water ice, which is a valuable resource but few say that the lunar South Pole is not necessarily better than the north pole in terms of solar energy, material resources, or ease of landing.
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