Probabilistic Meteoroid Hazard Analysis for Lunar South Pole Infrastructure Design

The lunar South Pole has emerged as a strategic target for future space exploration due to its potential to host valuable resources and its favorable illumination conditions. However, the absence of a significant atmosphere leaves surface infrastructure directly exposed to meteoroid impacts, creating a critical challenge for long-term operations and mission sustainability. This study presents a probabilistic assessment of meteoroid impact hazard at the lunar South Polar region using version 3.0 of NASA’s Meteoroid Engineering Model (MEM 3.0). The proposed methodology integrates site-specific meteoroid flux estimation with probabilistic recurrence analysis to characterize meteoroid mass distributions, relative velocities, directional exposure conditions, and impact frequencies on the lunar surface. The results indicate that the meteoroid flux exhibits a well-defined peak near 25.5 km·s−1, with maximum values approaching 0.053 impacts·m−2 per year in the ram direction, confirming a pronounced directional anisotropy in the impact environment. Small particles dominate the cumulative impact frequency within the validated MEM 3.0 mass range (<101 g), whereas probabilistic extrapolation of the mass–frequency relationship suggests that extreme-mass impactors (∼106 g) occur far less frequently but generate substantially greater kinetic energies. Power law scaling relationships between impact frequency, particle mass, and return period are further used to define representative impact scenarios for engineering design and hazard assessment. The proposed methodology provides a physically consistent and scalable framework for evaluating meteoroid hazard conditions in localized lunar environments and supports the development of resilient infrastructure for future long-duration exploration missions at the lunar South Polar region.