Lunar outgassing

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Outgassing events in which radon, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide from deep in the lunar interior are vented to the surface may be the result of low level volcanic or tectonic events on the moon, and are hypothesized to be the source of the extremely thin lunar atmosphere. Understanding when and where these events occur may help us understand more about lunar tectonics and how the moon's atmosphere was formed.

Carbon and Nitrogen are both vital elements which will have to be imported from earth or from Carbonaceous asteroids. If outgassing events can be predicted it may be possible to utilize this valuable resource.

The Alpha Particle Spectrometer aboard Lunar Prospector was designed to detect these events by tracking the alpha particles emitted during the decay of radon and polonium (a daughter element in it's decay series). The APS data was obscured by solar activity during the mission, but may be viewable once the effects of solar activity have been filtered out. This task has not been done.

Ground Penetrating Radar studies have been made with wavelings penetrating 10-20 meters via Arecibo and Greenbank, but deeper and higher resolution scans are likely needed to detect sub-surface gas pockets. Radar dark areas in the 70cm band, termed "halos", have been detected around many impact craters. An especially large halo has been detected around Aristarchus crater and encompasses much of the Aristarchus plateau. Aristarchus is the major source of recent outgassing events detected via Radon 222 activity. It has been suggested that the Aristarchus halo may be the result of subsurface ice deposits, but this has not been confirmed.