Dark lunar craters could host ultrastable lasers for moon navigation

Phys · May 18, 2026 · 1023 words · By Ron Cowen

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What to know about Dark lunar craters could host ultrastable lasers for moon navigation

Physicist Jun Ye and his colleagues propose installing ultrastable silicon optical cavities in permanently shadowed lunar craters to create a high-precision navigation system. The proposal suggests that the extreme cold and vacuum of these regions would allow for a master time signal and the potential detection of gravitational waves.

Propaganda risk 0%

Claims checked 9

Techniques found 0

Topics 0

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Left coverage

Left0%

Center75%

Right25%

4 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

Dark lunar craters could host ultrastable lasers for moon navigation Gaby Clark Scientific Editor Andrew Zinin Lead Editor They rank among the darkest and coldest places in the solar system: Hundreds of lunar craters, many of them at the moon's south pole,…

Why it matters

That's exactly why physicist Jun Ye and his colleagues suggest that these craters are the perfect place to build a critical component for an ultrastable laser.

Common ground

On the moon, a highly stable laser—a source of coherent light that has a nearly unwavering frequency, or color—could provide a master time signal and offer GPS-like lunar navigation, said Ye, who is affiliated with both the National Institute of Standards and…

Perspective signals

No major persuasion pattern has been attached yet, so the source, headline, and evidence should carry most of the weight for readers.

Follow-up questions

What concrete event or decision sits underneath the headline: Dark lunar craters could host ultrastable lasers for moon navigation?
What evidence would most clearly confirm or weaken the claim that the optical cavity could be cooled further, without the need for a cryostat or other equipment, to a temperature of 16 K?
What should readers watch for in the next update to know whether the story is changing?

open_in_new Read the original article: https://phys.org/news/2026-05-dark-lunar-craters-host-ultrastable.html

analyticsAnalysis

Propaganda Score

confidence: 100%

Low risk. This article shows minimal use of propaganda techniques.

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 9 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

check_circle Corroborated 3

verified Verified By Reference 3

info Single Source 1

cancel Disputed 1

help Insufficient Evidence 1

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Claim 1: “the optical cavity could be cooled further, without the need for a cryostat or other equipment, to a temperature of 16 K.”

SINGLE SOURCE

The specific claim about cooling an optical cavity to 16 K by radiating heat into space without a cryostat appears in a specialized context (likely the paper mentioned in claim 5), but is not corroborated by other independent general sources in the provided evidence.

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web search NEUTRAL — Building the Infrastructure for Lunar Quantum Experiments. This environment is ideal for supporting an ultrastable optical cavity with performance surpassing the best terrestrial systems.
https://quantumzeitgeist.com/moon-dark-craters-could-host/

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web search NEUTRAL — Their setup uses a cryostat to keep the chip cooled to 1.5 K. “The chip is mounted to 3-axis cryogenic nanopositioners, which are used to couple to the devices optically by an optical fiber array abov…
https://www.laserfocusworld.com/quantum/article/55326662/opt…

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web search NEUTRAL — The cooling system of the Parker Solar Probe is powered by solar panels, which convert sunlight into electricity. This electricity is used to power the pumps that circulate the cold water through the …
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/can-the-parker-solar-p…

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Claim 2: “Ye and his colleagues, including researchers from JILA; NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California; the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Germany; and Lunetronic Inc. in San Francisco, describe their proposal in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

CORROBORATED

Web results confirm a paper titled 'Lunar Silicon Cavity' authored by Jun Ye and colleagues from JILA/NIST, and mention the feasibility of lunar cavities for frequency standards.

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web search NEUTRAL — Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in …
https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3544548

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web search NEUTRAL — Feasibility of Lunar Cavities for Stable Frequency Standards. Specific contributions include a detailed analysis of temperature stability achievable within 10cm diameter silicon cavities, predicting t…
https://quantumzeitgeist.com/moon-dark-craters-could-host/

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web search NEUTRAL — Lunar Silicon Cavity. Jun Ye,∗ Zoey Z. Hu, and Ben Lewis JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0440, USA.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.06352

verified

Claim 3: “Hundreds of lunar craters, many of them at the moon's south pole, never receive direct sunlight and lie in permanent shadow.”

VERIFIED BY REFERENCE

Wikipedia and NASA-related search results confirm the existence of permanently shadowed craters at the lunar south pole, specifically naming craters like Shackleton, Shoemaker, and Cabeus.

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web search NEUTRAL — The Moon's Erlanger crater is an example of a permanently shadowed crater.A lunar south pole terrain in coded color. Several permanently shadowed craters are shown: Shackleton, Shoemaker, Cabeus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanently_shadowed_crater

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web search NEUTRAL — This 13-mile-wide crater lies close to the moon’s south pole. Here, the sun never rises high above the horizon, and the rim of Shackleton blocks the sun’s rays from ever shining directly onto the crat…
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/25/science/moon-nasa-shadowc…

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web search NEUTRAL — Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole is one of the locations on NASA's shortlist for human exploration with the future Artemis missions.
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-spacecraft-permanently-shadowe…

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Claim 4: “NASA has already designated regions near the south pole's permanently shadowed craters as landing sites for the space agency's Artemis mission.”

CORROBORATED

Multiple sources (Mashable, AZERTAC, and other news reports) confirm that NASA has designated potential landing sites for the Artemis III mission near the lunar south pole's permanently shadowed regions.

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web search NEUTRAL — NASA released an update of its Artemis III moon landing regions. The agency will likely explore one of these nine candidate areas this decade as it establishes a permanent presence on the moon.
https://mashable.com/article/nasa-moon-landing-spot-artemis-…

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web search NEUTRAL — NASA announced Friday that it has selected 13 possible regions at the South Pole of the Moon as potential future landing sites for its Artemis III mission, a project aiming to send astronauts back to …
https://azertag.az/en/xeber/NASA_unveils_landing_sites_for_m…

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web search NEUTRAL — NASA has chosen nine potential landing sites near the Moon’s south pole for Artemis 3’s crewed lunar landing. Starship rocket stands tall on the gray lunar surface with Earth in the background. An art…
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/nasa-announces-po…

verified

Claim 5: “permanently shadowed regions on the moon remain central to long-term lunar exploration because they contain water-ice and other resources”

VERIFIED BY REFERENCE

NASA Science and Wikipedia explicitly confirm that permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) on the moon contain water-ice deposits.

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web search NEUTRAL — Permanently shadowed region of a body in the Solar System.In 2012, The Lyman Alpha Mapping Project aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has found that the permanently shadowed regions have a por…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanently_shadowed_crater

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web search NEUTRAL — The interior of the crater is a permanently shadowed region containing ice deposits. A new study, however, says there is less water ice on the moon in these regions than scientists previously thought.
https://earthsky.org/space/water-ice-on-the-moon-permanently…

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web search NEUTRAL — Permanently shadowed crater floors protect ancient ice deposits, and water molecules are present on the sunlit lunar surface.An analysis of the full set of data from M3, announced in 2018, revealed mu…
https://science.nasa.gov/moon/moon-water-and-ices/?linkId=89…

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Claim 6: “At that temperature, silicon neither expands nor contracts when exposed to tiny changes in temperature”

DISPUTED

Wikipedia states that pure silicon has a *negative* coefficient of thermal expansion between 18 and 120 kelvins. This contradicts the claim that it 'neither expands nor contracts' (which would be a zero coefficient) at 16 K, as 16 K is just outside the negative range and the provided evidence does not explicitly confirm a zero-crossing at exactly 16 K.

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web search NEUTRAL — Fairly pure silicon has a negative coefficient of thermal expansion for temperatures between about 18 and 120 kelvins (−255 and −153 °C; −427 and −244 °F).[5] ALLVAR Alloy 30, a titanium alloy, exhibi…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_expansion

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web search NEUTRAL — NZE has a substantial isotropic thermal expansion that ranges from 20-425k. The most exciting part about the materials is that individuals can use them to control the overall thermal expansion of othe…
https://ivypanda.com/essays/near-zero-thermal-coefficient-ma…

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web search NEUTRAL — Thermal conductivities of common metals, metallic elements and alloys. Thermal Conductivity - k - is the quantity of heat transmitted due to an unit temperature gradient, in unit time under steady con…
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-meta…

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Claim 7: “Their frigid temperature of around 50 degrees above absolute zero (50 kelvins) drastically reduces the random jitter of the mirrored surfaces.”

CORROBORATED

Multiple sources confirm extremely low temperatures in these regions. New Scientist reports -240°C (approx 33K) and another source mentions -423°F (approx 30K). While the claim says 'around 50K', these sources corroborate the general range of extreme cold (approx 30-50K) characteristic of these regions.

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web search NEUTRAL — A lunar south pole terrain in coded color. Several permanently shadowed craters are shown: Shackleton, Shoemaker, Cabeus. Such a crater must be located at high latitude (close to a pole) and be on a b…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanently_shadowed_crater

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web search NEUTRAL — The permanently shadowed regions of the southern pole on the moon can reach temperatures of -423°F and can make it very difficult for humans to explore.
https://phys.org/news/2024-12-explore-sample-lunar-volatiles…

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web search NEUTRAL — Permanently shadowed craters near the moon’s south pole stay at a constant -240 °C – 10 °C colder than Pluto. (Image: NASA).Dark craters near the moon’s south pole have snatched that title – which is …
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17810-moon-is-coldest…

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Claim 8: “Jun Ye et al, Lunar silicon cavity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2604438123”

INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

No evidence was found to verify the specific DOI or the 2026 publication date (which is in the future relative to current real-time data).

verified

Claim 9: “Jun Ye... is affiliated with both the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and JILA, a joint institute of NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder.”

VERIFIED BY REFERENCE

Both Wikipedia and the official NIST website confirm Jun Ye's affiliation with NIST and JILA (a joint institute of NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder).

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web search NEUTRAL — National Institute of Standards and Technology JILA University of Colorado at Boulder. Doctoral advisor. John L. Hall. NIST physicist Jun Ye adjusts the laser setup for a strontium atomic clock in his…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jun_Ye

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web search NEUTRAL — Jun Ye is a physicist with NIST and JILA, a joint research institute of NIST and the University of Colorado, and professor adjoint of physics at University of Colorado Boulder.
https://www.nist.gov/people/jun-ye

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web search NEUTRAL — JILA Members (JHub). CU. NIST. Map. Log in."As the Biden-Harris Administration has identified quantum information science as a critical and emerging technology," Ye's research into atomic clocks and q…
https://jila.colorado.edu/news-events/news/jila-nist-fellow-…

info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.