Uncertainty of Apollo deep moonquake locations and implications for future network designs

We determine location clouds for deep moonquakes by an adaptive grid search method, where each grid point inside the location cloud represents a possible solution of the location problem. We show that four distinct types of cloud shapes exist (i.e., ball, banana, cone, bowl), that their occurrence corresponds to the relative positions of source and receivers, and that the spatial distribution of these shapes provides a measure of the attenuation of elastic waves inside the Moon. Hence they provide an estimate of the location capability of the Apollo network and sparse network designs in general. Furthermore we develop a computationally cheap tool to analyze the location capability for future lunar seismic networks.

► Source location accuracy depends on geometric relation between source and receivers. ► Based on Apollo data, we locate 121 deep moonquake clusters with a non-linear method. ► Fifty-four clusters allow for far side locations. ► The geometries of location uncertainties allow to derive optimal network designs. ► Four state-of-the-art seismometers can cover the global lunar seismicity.