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NEWS RELEASE FROM THE PLANETARY SCIENCE INSTITUTE

FROM:
Alan Fischer
Public Information Officer
Planetary Science Institute
520-382-0411
520-622-6300
fischer@psi.edu


Tales of a Tilting Moon Hidden in Its Polar Ice

March 23, 2016, Tucson, Ariz. -- The same face of the Moon has not always pointed towards the Earth. The spin axis of the Moon has moved by at least
six degrees and that motion is recorded in ancient lunar ice deposits,
reports Matthew Siegler of the Planetary Science Institute and his
colleagues in a new paper in the journal Nature.

This motion is believed to have resulted from a warm, low-density region of
the lunar mantle below the dark patches known as the lunar mare. The same
heat source that caused the volcanic mare to form also warmed the mantle.
This is the first physical evidence that the Moon underwent such a dramatic change in orientation and implies that the ice on the Moon is billions of
years old.

Siegler is lead author on the Nature paper "Lunar True Polar Wander
Inferred from Polar Hydrogen." The new findings help explain the earliest dynamical and thermal history of the Moon and shed light on the origin of
lunar water.

"We found that the polar shift is required to explain the distribution of
ice matches perfectly with the existence of a fossilized mantle plume below
the lunar mare," said Siegler, a PSI Associate Research Scientist.
"So, the same thing that caused the dark lavas that make up the face of the Man on the Moon also caused the axis of the Moon to move - and it is
recorded in the polar ice."

"This ice distribution tells us the near side of the Moon shifted towards
the North Pole - so the Man on the Moon is sort of turning his noseup at
the Earth. This gives us a way to model exactly where the ice should be,
which tells us about its origin and where astronauts might find a drink on future missions to the Moon."

A physical change of the lunar spin axis, known as True Polar Wander, can
only result from a very large change in the mass distribution of the Moon. According to models by co-author and University of Arizona graduate student James Keane, this change was provided by a large, warm region of the
near-side lunar mantle, which still exists, controls the current
orientation of the Moon, and the face we see from Earth.

This also provides an explanation for a longstanding mystery of the odd distribution of lunar hydrogen that has been painstakingly mapped by
co-author Richard Miller of the University of Alabama, Huntsville.
Compared to similar temperature environments on the planet Mercury, the
Moon has far less ice. As this polar migration occurred, ice formerly
hidden from the Sun in shadowed craters near the lunar poles would have
moved into sunlight and boiled away.

The paper shows the Moon may have once had much more ice near its poles and
the ice we see today is the tiny portion, which has survived this polar migration. Large amounts of ice could have been brought to the Moon by
comets and icy asteroids early in the Moon's history or potentially
outgassed from the lunar mare themselves. Figuring out the origin of this ancient lunar water might also help scientists understand how water was delivered to the early Earth.

Visit http://www.psi.edu/news/sieglermoontilt for an image showing the
historic movement of the Moon's rotational axis.

Siegler's work was funded by a grant to PSI from the NASA SSERVI Vortices project and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission.


CONTACT:
Matthew Siegler
Associate Research Scientist
626-616-5276
msiegler@psi.edu

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