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Distributed Acoustic Sensing Without Burial: Implications for Seismic Studies of the Moon and Earth

Advances in seismic sensing on Earth are opening new possibilities for observing seismic processes on planetary bodies. On the Moon, much of our current understanding of internal structure is derived from a small number of Apollo-era seismic sensors sparsely distributed on the lunar surface. Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS), which transforms fiber-optic cables into dense, large-N seismic arrays, offers a fundamentally different approach to sensing seismicity, enabling scalable deployments with minimal surface operations. However, the feasibility of DAS on the lunar surface hinges on whether an effective coupling between the fiber cable and regolith can be achieved without burial.

We conducted earthquake detection and controlled-source experiments in a lunar regolith simulant to evaluate the performance of surface-deployed DAS. Earthquake recordings from regional and local events were obtained using fiber deployed at varying burial depths, while controlled shaker experiments systematically isolated the effects of burial, cable mechanical properties, free-hanging segments, and atmospheric noise on signal fidelity.

We find that, in a low-noise environment, surface-draped DAS can reliably detect remote seismic signals, with attenuation not consistently correlated with burial depth. Controlled-source experiments show that while burial improves amplitude and phase stability, mechanically stiff, thicker unburied cables can achieve comparable coupling when continuous ground contact is maintained. We also find that free-hanging cable sections significantly degrade performance, and wind-induced noise is shown to be a primary limitation for unburied terrestrial deployments—an effect absent on the Moon.

Our experiments clearly demonstrate that surface-deployed DAS is a viable and potentially transformative tool for future lunar seismic sensing and suggest a broader role for DAS in enabling new observational paradigms in both planetary and terrestrial seismology.

Session: New Frontiers in Seismic Observations and Modeling with Innovative Methods and Emerging Data on Earth and Other Planets - II

Type: Oral

Room: Ballroom G

Date: 4/17/2026

Presentation Time: 03:00 PM (local time)

Presenting Author: Carly Donahue

Student Presenter: No

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