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A team of geologists at the University of Maryland, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), and the University of Hawaii has published in Science Advances<\/a> a study demonstrating that seismic waves \u2014 the same kind that propagate through Earth during earthquakes \u2014 can detect and map frozen water deposits buried as deep as 2,625 feet (800 meters) beneath the Moon’s permanently shadowed polar craters. The paper appeared on July 31, 2026. The research team will not have to wait long to test those predictions: China’s Chang’e-7 spacecraft, which carries an onboard seismograph as one of its 18 scientific payloads, is expected to launch as early as late August 2026, with a landing near Shackleton Crater targeted for late 2026 \u2014 a site surrounded by some of the strongest suspected ice deposits on the Moon.<\/p>\n NASA’s Artemis program is targeting the Moon’s south polar region for its first crewed landing, currently planned for early 2028 under Artemis IV<\/a>. Water ice hidden in the permanently shadowed craters there is considered one of the most strategically valuable resources in the inner solar system: melted and purified, it becomes drinking water; split by electrolysis, it yields oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to fuel spacecraft. The question facing every mission that follows \u2014 robotic or crewed \u2014 is not whether ice exists somewhere at the south pole, which orbital sensors have established with high confidence, but where it is concentrated in enough quantity and at shallow enough depth to actually extract. The Lisabeth et al. study provides the first laboratory-validated, computationally modeled answer to that question: a seismometer on the lunar surface can generate a map.<\/p>\n Ice Makes Seismic Waves Run 2\u20133x Faster \u2014 and That Difference Is Detectable<\/p>\n The physical principle underlying the method is straightforward. When a seismic wave passes through dry regolith, it travels at a characteristic speed. When the gaps between soil grains are filled with ice, the mixture becomes dramatically stiffer, and the wave travels two to three times faster<\/a> than through dry soil. Ice-rich zones also cause seismic energy to bounce back rather than pass through \u2014 an acoustic reflection at the boundary between frozen and dry material, analogous to sonar echoing off a target underwater.<\/p>\n Both effects \u2014 the velocity increase and the reflectivity \u2014 are measurable with a surface seismometer. Nicholas Schmerr, an associate professor in UMD’s Department of Geological, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences and co-author of the study, described the practical implication<\/a>: a well-placed seismometer on the Moon can detect these effects and reveal not just whether ice is present but roughly how much of it there is. Different ice deposit geometries \u2014 concentrated layers, patchy distributions, gradients at different depths \u2014 produce different and distinguishable seismic signatures. The model currently resolves the subsurface down to approximately 800 meters (2,625 feet), a depth no drill-based instrument in the current mission queue can reach.<\/p>\n FROST: A Dinner-Plate Vacuum Chamber That Mimics the Moon<\/p>\n The model could only be built after someone measured what ice actually does to lunar regolith at a microscopic scale \u2014 and measuring that required building an instrument that did not previously exist.<\/p>\n Harrison Lisabeth, lead author and a rock physicist in Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source<\/a> (ALS) \u2014 a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science user facility \u2014 worked with colleagues Dula Parkinson and Harold Barnard at the ALS to design and construct the Frozen Regolith Observation and Sublimation Testbed, aptly abbreviated as FROST. Funding for FROST’s design and construction came from Berkeley Lab’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program in 2023. The chamber is roughly 15 inches (38 centimeters) across \u2014 small enough to sit on a workbench \u2014 and attaches directly to an ALS beamline, where synchrotron X-rays produce detailed three-dimensional images of whatever is inside.<\/p>\n By cooling the chamber to subzero temperatures under near-vacuum conditions that replicate the lunar surface environment, and then imaging samples with X-ray microtomography, FROST lets researchers see exactly how ice forms and distributes within the microscopic pore spaces between soil grains. For this paper \u2014 the first scientific study to use FROST \u2014 Lisabeth and Schmerr studied simulated lunar regolith, freezing it while varying the amount of trapped ice, and imaged the results at different ice concentrations.<\/p>\n “Materials behave weirdly in the high vacuum and super cold environment of the Moon,” Lisabeth said<\/a>, “and we simply didn’t have good enough models until now.” The FROST measurements are what Lisabeth calls the “ground truth” of lunar subsurface physics \u2014 without them, any computational model of seismic behavior in icy lunar soil is built on assumptions rather than measured physical reality. “Because when you’re researching in the field, if you don’t have ground truth, you’re never going to understand what’s happening a hundred meters down or three kilometers down,” Lisabeth said<\/a>.<\/p>\n FROST has since been used for other studies on water transport and thermal properties of regolith and the dynamics of glaciers on Earth. As part of the broader Geophysical Exploration of the Dynamics and Evolution of the Solar System (GEODES) project<\/a> \u2014 a NASA-funded initiative that uses geophysics to investigate the Moon, near-Earth asteroids, and the moons of Mars \u2014 the instrument represents a reusable tool for studying any icy planetary body where missions will eventually need to prospect for resources.<\/p>\n Three-Part Method: Lab, Thermal Map, and Seismic Simulation<\/p>\n The study combined three independent lines of inquiry, each contributed by one of the three co-authors.<\/p>\n Lisabeth’s laboratory measurements using FROST provided the molecular-scale rock physics inputs. Matthew Siegler, an expert on ice deposits across the solar system<\/a> based at the University of Hawaii, used satellite observations to model detailed temperature maps of the Moon’s south polar region, identifying which specific craters stayed cold enough to preserve ice over billions of years. Schmerr at UMD ran computer simulations of small moonquakes propagating through and interacting with ice-bearing subsurface layers.<\/p>\n The three strands were combined into a unified framework capable of simulating how different ice deposit configurations would affect seismic waves at the surface. In every modeled scenario, the presence of ice produced clear and measurable marks on the seismic data. The model’s output: testable predictions that a seismometer in the field can validate or falsify \u2014 making it a scientific tool rather than a speculative exercise.<\/p>\n How Does Seismic Prospecting Find Ice the Drill Cannot Reach?<\/p>\n Earth’s oil and gas industry has used seismic prospecting \u2014 sending controlled vibrations into the ground and analyzing how they return \u2014 to map subsurface geology for more than a century. On the Moon, the same principle applies, but the sources of seismic energy are different. Natural moonquakes \u2014 generated by tidal forces from Earth, by shallow fault slip, and by meteoroid impacts \u2014 propagate through the lunar interior with unusually low attenuation: the Moon absorbs seismic energy far less efficiently than Earth, so waves travel longer distances and last longer before fading. This is an advantage for deep ice detection. Artificial sources are also viable: the percussive drill on the NASA Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER)<\/a> is designed to generate seismic waves as it digs samples, with onboard sensors to measure how those short-frequency waves propagate beneath the surface.<\/p>\n VIPER’s other instruments can detect ice in the upper meter of lunar soil, but seismic waves can probe ice at depths those instruments cannot reach \u2014 potentially several hundred meters or more, once the model is refined with real field data, Siegler noted<\/a>.<\/p>\n A note on VIPER’s status: the rover was canceled by NASA in July 2024 after cost overruns. In September 2025, NASA awarded Blue Origin a Commercial Lunar Payload Services task order to potentially deliver VIPER to the lunar south pole via Blue Moon MK1 lander, targeting a late 2027 landing, conditional on performance milestones. The Schmerr team intends to apply the model to VIPER’s seismic data if and when the rover reaches the surface.<\/p>\n Chang’e-7 Seismograph: First Real-World Test Is Weeks Away<\/p>\n The study’s predictions will face their first real-world test sooner than most lunar science papers ever see. Chang’e-7, China’s most complex robotic Moon mission to date, is expected to launch from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on Hainan Island<\/a> as early as late August 2026, with the Long March 5 rocket prepared for liftoff. NOTAM filings reviewed by freelance space journalist Andrew Jones<\/a> indicate a launch window opening August 24, running through August 31.<\/p>\n The mission’s lander \u2014 one of four spacecraft in the coordinated Chang’e-7 fleet \u2014 carries a seismograph designed to register moonquakes and probe the lunar interior. The targeted landing site near Shackleton Crater is surrounded by multiple suspected ice deposits, making it an ideal location to check whether the seismic signatures predicted by the Lisabeth et al. model actually appear in live data. “Our findings are laying the groundwork for an observation we’ll get in the next couple of years,” Schmerr said<\/a>. “No one has physically measured the ice on the moon yet, but we now have a prediction for what to look out for. That’s an important first step.”<\/p>\n Artemis IV Seismic Network: What Astronauts Will Carry to the Surface<\/p>\n A second real-world test is planned for the Artemis program. Schmerr co-developed the Lunar Environmental Monitoring Station (LEMS)<\/a>, a seismic instrument designed specifically for surface deployment by Artemis astronauts. If LEMS is deployed during an Artemis IV surface mission, the instrument will become part of a network capable of detecting moonquakes and characterizing the subsurface \u2014 including, if the model’s predictions are correct, finding ice at depths no prior instrument could reach.<\/p>\n