A Review of Lunar Polar Exploration

Since the 20th century, lunar exploration has become an important part of human space exploration. Now, the means of lunar exploration are more varied; the spatial resolution is higher; and the explored regions are gradually changed from global areas to partial areas. Due to the special geographical environment, there is a large area of permanently shadowed regions in the lunar pole, which makes lunar polar regions become the highlight of scientific research. In this paper, we review some scientific achievements of various researches on lunar polar regions, which are mainly related to optical images, digital elevation model (DEM), presence of water-ice and brightness temperature. This paper also introduces the parameters of detection equipment. All these can provide some references and advice for future lunar exploration.