GC12-FibreOptic-47, updated on 06 May 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-gc12-fibreoptic-47
Galileo conference: Fibre Optic Sensing in Geosciences
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

DAS system for the Moon

Benoit Tauzin1, Philippe Lognonné2, Taichi Kawamura2, Mark Panning3, Philippe Jousset4, Vincent Lanticq5, Diego Mercerat6, Jean-Philippe Metaxian2, Clément Hibert7, Sebastien De Raucourt2, Olivier Coutant8, and Etienne Almoric5
Benoit Tauzin et al.
  • 1Université de Lyon, Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon, Villeurbanne, France (benoit.tauzin@univ-lyon1.fr)
  • 2Université Paris Cité, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, Paris, France.
  • 3California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, USA.
  • 4GFZ Helmholtz Centre, Potsdam, Germany.
  • 5FEBUS Optics, Pau, France.
  • 6CEREMA, GeoAzur, Nice, France.
  • 7Institut Terre et Environnement de Strasbourg, Ecole et Observatoire des Sciences de la Terre, Strasbourg, France.
  • 8Université Joseph Fourier, Institut des Sciences de la Terre, Grenoble, France.

Active seismic experiments during the Apollo missions characterized the lunar regolith and crust, while passive monitoring suggested a thermal stress origin for the high-frequency lunar seismic noise. Deploying Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) instruments, capable of withstanding the extreme lunar conditions, would allow to examine various lunar environments including permanently shadowed regions, which trap water ice due to their extremely cold temperatures. Benefiting from high spatial and temporal resolutions, DAS surveys would allow analyzing wave propagation, constructing 2D wave velocity sections, and potentially identifying ice-related velocity variations. How the DAS technology positions in terms of self-noise with respect to Apollo and modern sensors? We estimate the strain noise level of geophones to be around 1 pε/sqrt(Hz). For a 5-km long optic fiber with 10 meters gauge length, the typical self-noise of current DAS systems is around 1 pε/sqrt(Hz). This indicates that DAS instruments may achieve a low noise level on par with the best current geophysical technologies, which is crucial for precise and reliable exploration of lunar structure. We will discuss experiments that would be necessary for qualifying such an instrument for space applications.

How to cite: Tauzin, B., Lognonné, P., Kawamura, T., Panning, M., Jousset, P., Lanticq, V., Mercerat, D., Metaxian, J.-P., Hibert, C., De Raucourt, S., Coutant, O., and Almoric, E.: DAS system for the Moon, Galileo conference: Fibre Optic Sensing in Geosciences, Catania, Italy, 16–20 Jun 2024, GC12-FibreOptic-47, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-gc12-fibreoptic-47, 2024.