Comprehensive Evaluation of the Lunar South Pole Landing Sites Using Self-Organizing Maps for Scientific and Engineering Purposes
The permanently shadowed regions of the lunar South Pole have become a key target for international lunar exploration due to their unique scientific value and engineering challenges. In order to effectively screen suitable landing zones near the lunar South Pole, this research proposes a comprehensi...
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MDPI AG
2025-04-01
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| author | Hengxi Liu Yongzhi Wang Shibo Wen Sheng Zhang Kai Zhu Jianzhong Liu |
| author_facet | Hengxi Liu Yongzhi Wang Shibo Wen Sheng Zhang Kai Zhu Jianzhong Liu |
| author_sort | Hengxi Liu |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The permanently shadowed regions of the lunar South Pole have become a key target for international lunar exploration due to their unique scientific value and engineering challenges. In order to effectively screen suitable landing zones near the lunar South Pole, this research proposes a comprehensive evaluation method based on a self-organizing map (SOM). Using multi-source remote sensing data, the method classifies and analyzes candidate landing zones by combining scientific purposes (such as hydrogen abundance, iron oxide abundance, gravity anomalies, water ice distance analysis, and geological features) and engineering constraints (such as Sun visibility, Earth visibility, slope, and roughness). Through automatic clustering, the SOM model finds the important regions. Subsequently, it integrates with a supervised learning model, a random forest, to determine the feature importance weights in more detail. The results from the research indicate the following: the areas suitable for landing account for 9.05%, 5.95%, and 5.08% in the engineering, scientific, and synthesized perspectives, respectively. In the weighting analysis of the comprehensive data, the weights of Earth visibility, hydrogen abundance, kilometer-scale roughness, and slope data all account for more than 10%, and these are thought to be the four most important factors in the automated site selection process. Furthermore, the kilometer-scale roughness data are more important in the comprehensive weighting, which is in line with the finding that the kilometer-scale roughness data represent both surface roughness from an engineering perspective and bedrock geology from a scientific one. In this study, a local examination of typical impact craters is performed, and it is confirmed that all 10 possible landing sites suggested by earlier authors are within the appropriate landing range. The findings demonstrate that the SOM-model-based analysis approach can successfully assess lunar South Pole landing areas while taking multiple constraints into account, uncovering spatial distribution features of the region, and offering a rationale for choosing desired landing locations. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-5280971abc03453e9b039b47e57cac53 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2072-4292 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-04-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Remote Sensing |
| spelling | doaj-art-5280971abc03453e9b039b47e57cac532025-08-20T03:52:57ZengMDPI AGRemote Sensing2072-42922025-04-01179157910.3390/rs17091579Comprehensive Evaluation of the Lunar South Pole Landing Sites Using Self-Organizing Maps for Scientific and Engineering PurposesHengxi Liu0Yongzhi Wang1Shibo Wen2Sheng Zhang3Kai Zhu4Jianzhong Liu5College of Geoexploration Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130026, ChinaCollege of Geoexploration Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130026, ChinaCollege of Geoexploration Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130026, ChinaCollege of Resources and Environment Engineering, Guizhou University, Guiyang 550025, ChinaInstitute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang 550081, ChinaInstitute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang 550081, ChinaThe permanently shadowed regions of the lunar South Pole have become a key target for international lunar exploration due to their unique scientific value and engineering challenges. In order to effectively screen suitable landing zones near the lunar South Pole, this research proposes a comprehensive evaluation method based on a self-organizing map (SOM). Using multi-source remote sensing data, the method classifies and analyzes candidate landing zones by combining scientific purposes (such as hydrogen abundance, iron oxide abundance, gravity anomalies, water ice distance analysis, and geological features) and engineering constraints (such as Sun visibility, Earth visibility, slope, and roughness). Through automatic clustering, the SOM model finds the important regions. Subsequently, it integrates with a supervised learning model, a random forest, to determine the feature importance weights in more detail. The results from the research indicate the following: the areas suitable for landing account for 9.05%, 5.95%, and 5.08% in the engineering, scientific, and synthesized perspectives, respectively. In the weighting analysis of the comprehensive data, the weights of Earth visibility, hydrogen abundance, kilometer-scale roughness, and slope data all account for more than 10%, and these are thought to be the four most important factors in the automated site selection process. Furthermore, the kilometer-scale roughness data are more important in the comprehensive weighting, which is in line with the finding that the kilometer-scale roughness data represent both surface roughness from an engineering perspective and bedrock geology from a scientific one. In this study, a local examination of typical impact craters is performed, and it is confirmed that all 10 possible landing sites suggested by earlier authors are within the appropriate landing range. The findings demonstrate that the SOM-model-based analysis approach can successfully assess lunar South Pole landing areas while taking multiple constraints into account, uncovering spatial distribution features of the region, and offering a rationale for choosing desired landing locations.https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/17/9/1579selection of lunar South Pole landing zonesself-organizing mapcomprehensive evaluation |
| spellingShingle | Hengxi Liu Yongzhi Wang Shibo Wen Sheng Zhang Kai Zhu Jianzhong Liu Comprehensive Evaluation of the Lunar South Pole Landing Sites Using Self-Organizing Maps for Scientific and Engineering Purposes Remote Sensing selection of lunar South Pole landing zones self-organizing map comprehensive evaluation |
| title | Comprehensive Evaluation of the Lunar South Pole Landing Sites Using Self-Organizing Maps for Scientific and Engineering Purposes |
| title_full | Comprehensive Evaluation of the Lunar South Pole Landing Sites Using Self-Organizing Maps for Scientific and Engineering Purposes |
| title_fullStr | Comprehensive Evaluation of the Lunar South Pole Landing Sites Using Self-Organizing Maps for Scientific and Engineering Purposes |
| title_full_unstemmed | Comprehensive Evaluation of the Lunar South Pole Landing Sites Using Self-Organizing Maps for Scientific and Engineering Purposes |
| title_short | Comprehensive Evaluation of the Lunar South Pole Landing Sites Using Self-Organizing Maps for Scientific and Engineering Purposes |
| title_sort | comprehensive evaluation of the lunar south pole landing sites using self organizing maps for scientific and engineering purposes |
| topic | selection of lunar South Pole landing zones self-organizing map comprehensive evaluation |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/17/9/1579 |
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