One of the primary objectives of upcoming lunar missions is to locate ice-bearing rocks at the South Pole. While evidence for their presence exists, the exact distribution and quantity remain uncertain. In this study, we evaluate the potential of seismic ambient noise techniques—including seismic interferometry, H/V spectral ratios, distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), and rotational measurements—for detecting ice-bearing rocks on the Moon. To achieve this, we perform 2D numerical simulations using a digital twin model of the shallow subsurface, incorporating high-velocity heterogeneities. Hereby, the resolution limits of the different methods are evaluated. Phase velocity dispersion curves of Rayleigh waves are extracted from DAS and rotational data, while group velocity dispersion curves are derived from interferometry. The strong scattering effects of the lunar regolith, in particular, influence the seismic interferometry results for large inter-station distances. While all methods reveal clear signatures of ice-bearing rocks due to the strong velocity increase, even for small weight percentages of ice, a combination of techniques is needed to achieve accurate resolution of depth, width, and ice content.

In the past few years, the remarkable progress of commercially operated spacecrafts, the success with reusable rocket engines, as well as the international competition to explore space, has led to a substantial acceleration of activities in the design and preparation of ambitious future lunar missions. In the search for ice and/or cavities imaging the shallow subsurface structure is of vital importance. Hereby, previous studies have shown that seismic interferometry is a promising method to investigate the subsurface properties from passive lunar data. In this study, we want to evaluate the potential of this method further by examining the required duration of seismic measurements and the influence of scattering on the Green´s function retrieval. Therefore, we applied seismic interferometry to both measured Apollo 17 data and synthetic data. Our findings indicate that, under optimal conditions, a few hours of data are sufficient when using the method of time-scaled phase-weighted stack (ts-PWS). However, this strongly depends on the inter-station distance, the orientation towards the principal noise sources, and the timing of the measurement during the lunar cycle. Additionally, we were able to reproduce the measured data using numerical simulations in 2D. The synthetic results show that scattering effects clearly influence the Green´s function extraction, especially for larger station distances.