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The Population of Craters that Host Permanently Shadowed Regions Near the Lunar South Pole: Implications for Typical Cold-trap Lifetimes

  • Authors: Caleb I. Fassett, Ross A. Beyer, Brett W. Denevi, Ariel N. Deutsch, Masatoshi Hirabayashi, Erwan Mazarico, Petr Pokorný, Stuart J. Robbins

Caleb I. Fassett et al 2026 The Planetary Science Journal 7 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 5.

A differential SFD of PSRs within the VIPER landing areas based on SfS topography, along with the background population across the pole. On this differential plot, where the PSR-hosting craters’ SFD crosses isochrons is a proxy for how long craters at that size typically host PSRs. The continued upward slope of craters found to host PSRs from D ∼ 20 to 80 m contrasts with the pole-wide analysis, suggesting that the PSR-hosting lifetime declines more steadily than would be inferred from the pole-wide analysis alone. The most likely cause of this is incomplete detection of decameter-scale PSRs with LOLA data alone. For this reason, we use the VIPER region as a guide to the lifetimes of craters D < 100 m. Plotted with CraterStats (G. G. Michael 2013).

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