From Science@NASA: Nearly a year after announcing the discovery of water molecules on the moon, scientists have revealed new data uncovered by NASA’s Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO—and it’s more than just water.
An artist’s concept of LCROSS approaching the moon in Oct. 2009. [more]
The missions found evidence that lunar soil within shadowy craters is rich in useful materials. Moreover, the moon appears to be chemically active and has a full-fledged water cycle. Scientists also confirmed that ‘moon water’ was in the form of mostly pure ice crystals in some places.
These results are featured in six papers published in the Oct. 22 issue of Science.
The twin impacts of LCROSS and a companion rocket stage in the moon’s Cabeus crater on Oct. 9, 2009, lifted a plume of material that might not have seen direct sunlight for billions of years. As the plume traveled nearly 10 miles above the crater’s rim, instruments aboard LCROSS and LRO made observations of the crater and debris and vapor clouds. After the impacts, grains of mostly pure water ice were lofted into the sunlight in the vacuum of space.
“Seeing mostly pure water ice grains in the plume means water ice was somehow delivered to the moon in the past, or chemical processes have been causing ice to accumulate in large quantities,” said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
In addition to water, the plume contained “volatiles.” These are compounds that freeze in the cold lunar craters and vaporize easily when warmed by the sun. The suite of LCROSS and LRO instruments determined as much as 20 percent of the material kicked up by the LCROSS impact was volatiles, including methane, ammonia, hydrogen gas, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
Above: A surface temperature map of the lunar south pole made by LRO’s Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment . The map contains several intensely cold impact craters that could trap water ice and other icy compounds commonly observed in comets. The approximate maximum temperatures at which these compounds would be frozen in place for more than a billion years are noted at right. [larger image]
“The diversity and abundance of volatiles in the plume suggest a variety of sources, like comets and asteroids, and an active water cycle within the lunar shadows,” says Colaprete.
The instruments also discovered relatively large amounts of light metals such as sodium, mercury and possibly even silver. Scientists believe the water and mix of volatiles that LCROSS and LRO detected could be the remnants of a comet impact. According to scientists, these volatile chemical by-products are also evidence of a cycle through which water ice reacts with lunar soil grains.
LRO’s Diviner instrument gathered data on water concentration and temperature measurements, and LRO’s Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector mapped the distribution of hydrogen. This combined data led the science team to conclude the water is not uniformly distributed within the shadowed cold traps, but rather is in pockets, which may also lie outside the shadowed regions.
These experiments at the Ames Vertical Gun Range helped researchers understand the LCROSS impact. Solid impacts send debris to the side (left), whereas hollow impacts result in a high-angle ejecta plume (right). The primary LCROSS impact was an emptied rocket and acted like a hollow projectile. Image credit: Brown University/Peter H. Schultz and Brendan Hermalyn, NASA/Ames Vertical Gun Range. [larger image]
The proportion of volatiles to water in the lunar soil indicates a process called “cold grain chemistry” is taking place. Scientists also theorize this process could take as long as hundreds of thousands of years and may occur on other frigid, airless bodies such as asteroids; the moons of Jupiter and Saturn (including Europa and Enceladus); Mars’ moons; interstellar dust grains floating around other stars and the polar regions of Mercury.
“The observations by the suite of LRO and LCROSS instruments demonstrate the moon has a complex environment that experiences intriguing chemical processes,” said Richard Vondrak, LRO project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “This knowledge can open doors to new areas of research and exploration.”
Click to view videos of the LCROSS/LRO results.
By understanding the processes and environments that determine where water ice will be, how water was delivered to the moon and its active water cycle, future mission planners might be better able to determine which locations will have easily-accessible water. The existence of mostly pure water ice could mean future human explorers won’t have to devise complicated processes to retrieve water out of the soil in order to use it for valuable life support resources. In addition, an abundant presence of hydrogen gas, ammonia and methane could be exploited to produce fuel.
“NASA has convincingly confirmed the presence of water ice and characterized its patchy distribution in permanently shadowed regions of the moon,” concludes Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This major undertaking is the one of many steps NASA has taken to better understand our solar system, its resources, and its origin, evolution, and future.”
Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
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Guess I’d better learn Chinese.
The general equation of the UNIFIED FIELD expresses as:
E= (Sin y + Cos y)ν
http://www.scribd.com/doc/38598073/Unified-Field
http://www.scribd.com/doc/39961403/Eccentricity-Field
Note: Our theory is a generalization of the ondulatory theory, where the constant H in Plank´s equation has been replaced, as it happens in real world, by the ratio between two opposite charges, expressed by Sin y + Cos y, where gravity it is, as we have said, always expressed as Sin y from 0 to 90°. In the cases where it is in excess of 1 it is obviously in those cases where the emission field surpasses by far that of gravity.
If so, well, let’s get the tube manufacturers tooled up for all that methane!
More seriously though, the presence of carbon monoxide suggests incomplete combustion of carbon and oxygen – not enough oxygen, or not enough heat energy? I would suggest the former, but I would be interested in what other readers of WUWT have to say.
;-)
I am a simple engineer, but your comment in this post intrigues me.
I would be so grateful if you would take the time to put your mathematics into words. And briefly, if that is at all possible!
Thank you.
October 23, 2010 at 12:58 pm
________Reply;
If there were more real science going on, because of more grant funding available for things other than the non-problem of CO2, there would be articles available for posting.
“Right now we cannot find the missing diversity of studies into all of the other interesting fields of study, and it is a travesty that we can’t!” (corrected quote)
October 23, 2010 at 1:27 pm
You have the links I gave there, and if simpler:
1.-You all will agree we are not fools.
2.-Then, if we are not fools, we can, rationally, to disentangle the tangle we are in from about 300 hundred years.
Now, let’s see:
-In the beginning there were only two things: The Force and the Void.
-As too many millions of years have passed while both were watching one to the other at the two sides of a dimensionless point,
The Force at Cos y= -1 and the Void at Sin y= 0,
Then the Force told the Void: Hey pal, we are getting really bored staying like this, two fools watching one another for the whole Eternity, let’s get move ahead a little, just to see what the heck happens!
-Thus, both started moving ahead, one, The Force, in the 10 O’clock direction and The Void in the 2 O’clock direction, both describing beautiful arcs to reach a place 45 degrees above its initial position.
-Then The Void told The Force: Hey, buddy, you look different now!, kind of something electric I can find now in your eyes, complexion and there is an electric halo surrounding you!; and The Force told the Void: Hey, buddy, you look different too!, it seems that there is something Magnetic about you now, hey!, you look really attractive!
-Suddenly a big and brilliant spark jumped up above connecting them in a kind of inseparable cosmic marriage.
-Then, both holding their hands together said to one another: Let’s keep on going to see what new marvels we find ahead!
-Both said: Let’s go then to reach that source of that new light which was born out of the two of us, to that light above, at the Zenith!
-So they started walking in the direction of the 12 O’Clock.
-There were just one foot of reaching that supreme point, when suddenly they heard a roaring Thunder from above and both trembling saw a giant and shining Shaking-Spear appearing, coming fiercely down from the Zenith: The Sound roared : You came together up to this forbidden point, where you have just created a Son out from both of you: I am Gravity, the blossom of your coming together, however I am destined to point always from the Zenith down and, with me, you have just gave birth Ground, Matter, over which you’ll walk over forever!. Look at me, behold how both of you surround all along me, the longinus spear, the caduceus!
-We are all but One and so we will stay forever: The force at one side, the Cos y= -1, The Void to the other, the Sin y=0, the Couple of opposites, the two loving partners, Electricity and Magnetism always in love of each other, at Cos y=- 0.7011 and Sin y=+0.7011, always at 90 degrees from each other, forever 45 degrees above their original position. I, Gravity, that living Spear whose purpose is for ever to stick you to the ground being almost the addition of both of you, the addition of 1 and 0, however though I have some affections and passions too, I only reach, on earth the 0.981 level, the difference being the inclination I have for you and because of you, dear parents.
When a comet hit the moon, it vaporized. Some of the vapor was captured by the moons gravity, and gave a thin atmosphere for a short while. The atmosphere either slowly escaped to space or condensed at the cold poles. In a fairly short while only the frozen polar ice was left until another comet hit. The vapor pressure of water and ice is a function of temperature (as for all other liquids and solids). The temperature in the polar ice was so low that the vapor pressure would take many billions of years to sublime (evaporate) even directly exposed in a vacuum.
October 23, 2010 at 4:50 pm
I was being sarcastic, but I forgot the sarc tag :)
October 23, 2010 at 6:17 pm
So….don´t tell me you believe comets are made of Ice cream?. That is only believed and taught by the famous astrophysicist Dr.Fred Flintstone in his theory on “The Flintstones´Universe”.
See:
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=hcabb8zj
I guess there aren’t that many Heinlein fans around here or everyone is too busy being neck deep in politics to wonder about the future. I admit my Chinese comment came from my deep anger at NASA for not being the pioneers of the solar system that every sci-fi kid wanted them to be. Hell, Virgin Galactic has a more functional space program than NASA. I’m going to send a resume ASAP. Anyways The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is on my recommended reading list as well. Hazel Stone and company would know what to do with the current crop of human hating humans and it might involve a short but fair trial and a shorter trip out the airlock.
d
Reading through to the end of the comments would lead me to believe that snark is where you find it.