[DKT27]

A radar experiment aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 lunar spacecraft has identified thick deposits of water-ice near the Moon's north pole.

India's Chandrayaan-1 probe carried US equipment to the Moon


The US space agency's (Nasa) Mini-Sar experiment found more than 40 small craters containing water-ice.

But other compounds - such as hydrocarbons - are mixed up in lunar ice, according to new results from another Moon mission called LCROSS.

The findings were presented at a major planetary science conference in Texas.

The craters with ice range from 2km to 15km (one to nine miles) in diameter; how much there is depends on its thickness in each crater. But Nasa says the ice must be at least a couple of metres thick to give the signature seen by Chandrayaan-1.

Dr Paul Spudis, from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, estimated there was at least 600 million metric tonnes of water-ice held within these impact craters.

The equivalent amount, expressed as rocket fuel, would be enough to launch one space shuttle per day for 2,200 years, he told journalists at the 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

What all these craters have in common are large areas of their interiors that never see sunlight.

Extreme cold

Temperatures in some of these permanently darkened craters can drop as low as 25 Kelvin (-248C; -415F) - colder than the surface of Pluto - allowing water-ice to remain stable.

"It is mostly pure water-ice," said Dr Spudis. "It could be under a few tens of centimetres of dry regolith (lunar soil)."

This protective layer of soil could prevent blocks of pure ice from vaporising even in some areas which are exposed to sunlight, he explained.


Ice thrown up by the LCROSS impact was in a crystalline form


In February, President Barack Obama cancelled the programme designed to return Americans to the Moon by 2020.

However, Dr Spudis said: "Now we can say with a fair degree of confidence that a sustainable human presence on the Moon is possible. It's possible using the resources we find there.

"The results from these missions, that we have seen in the last few months, are totally revolutionising our view of the Moon."

Chandrayaan-1 was India's contribution to the armada of unmanned spacecraft to have been launched to the Moon in recent years. Japan, Europe, China and the US have all sent missions packed with instruments to explore Earth's satellite in unprecedented detail.

In Nasa's LCROSS mission, a rocket and a probe were smashed into a large crater at the lunar south pole, kicking up water-ice and water vapour.

Spectral measurements of material thrown up by the LCROSS impact indicate some of the water-ice was in a crystalline form, rather than the "amorphous" form in which the water molecules are randomly arranged.

Water source

"There's not one flavour of water on the Moon; there's a range of everything from relatively pure ice all the way to adsorbed water," said the mission's chief scientist Anthony Colaprete, from Nasa's Ames Research Center.

"And here is an instance inside Cabeus crater where it appears we threw up a range of fine-grained particulates of near pure crystalline water-ice."

Overall, results from recent missions suggest there could be several sources for lunar ice.

One important way for water to form is through an interaction with the solar wind, the fast-moving stream of particles that constantly billows away from the Sun.

Space radiation triggers a chemical reaction in which oxygen atoms already in the soil acquire hydrogen nuclei to make water molecules and the simpler hydrogen-oxygen (OH) molecule. This "adsorbed" water may be present as fine films coating particles of lunar soil.

In a cold sink effect, water from elsewhere on the lunar surface may migrate to the slightly cooler poles, where it is retained in permanently shadowed craters.

Scientists have also reported the presence of hydrocarbons, such as ethylene, in the LCROSS impact plume. Dr Colaprete said any hydrocarbons were likely to have been delivered to the lunar surface by comets and asteroids - another vital source of lunar water.

However, he added, some of these chemical species could arise through "cold chemistry" on interstellar dust grains accumulated on the Moon.

In addition to water, researchers have seen a range of other "volatiles" (compounds with low boiling points) in the impact plume, including sulphur dioxide (SO2) and carbon dioxide (CO2).

The results from the Mini-Sar instrument are due to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The team is currently analysing results for craters at the Moon's south pole.


Source - BBC

[DKT27]

NASA finds up to 1.3 trillion pounds of lunar ice


A map of the north pole of the moon, showing the locations of the many craters that have now been determined to contain water ice.


NASA scientists reported Monday night that the space agency has discovered as much as 1.3 trillion pounds of frozen water on the moon, a finding that indicates future lunar visitors could have a wealth of water waiting for them.
The new data was found using a NASA radar placed on board India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. The ice was located in more than 40 craters, which vary in size from one mile to nine miles wide. All are located near the moon's north pole. All told, it is thought that there may be 600 million cubic meters of ice in the craters.
"The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water creation, migration, deposition, and retention are occurring on the moon," said Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, in a release. "The new discoveries show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration, and operational destination than people had previously thought."
In November, NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, uncovered a significant amount of ice and vapor close to the moon's south pole when NASA sent an unmanned rocket stage crashing into a permanently shadowed crater.
And over the last year, NASA said Monday night, it has been using mini-SAR, a light, synthetic aperture radar, to map the many lunar craters that are always in shadow and therefore not visible from Earth. Results from the mapping efforts indicated the potential presence of ice.
Source - CNET

[box]

Quote

One important way for water to form is through an interaction with the solar wind, the fast-moving stream of particles that constantly billows away from the Sun.
Space radiation triggers a chemical reaction in which oxygen atoms already in the soil acquire hydrogen nuclei to make water molecules and the simpler hydrogen-oxygen (OH) molecule. This "adsorbed" water may be present as fine films coating particles of lunar soil.

In reality, I think I pissed at all those locations. If you can get NASA to looked at the lunar ice very closely, then you will see that it is actually colored yellow.

[Bizarre™]

box, on 02 March 2010 - 11:37 PM, said:

In reality, I think I pissed at all those locations. If you can get NASA to looked at the lunar ice very closely, then you will see that it is actually colored yellow.

Nice, and I bet you shoughted into it too

This post has been edited by Bizarre™: 03 March 2010 - 06:35 AM

[jofre]

box, on 02 March 2010 - 11:37 PM, said:

Quote

One important way for water to form is through an interaction with the solar wind, the fast-moving stream of particles that constantly billows away from the Sun.
Space radiation triggers a chemical reaction in which oxygen atoms already in the soil acquire hydrogen nuclei to make water molecules and the simpler hydrogen-oxygen (OH) molecule. This "adsorbed" water may be present as fine films coating particles of lunar soil.

In reality, I think I pissed at all those locations. If you can get NASA to looked at the lunar ice very closely, then you will see that it is actually colored yellow.

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When I went to there I found some liquid colored yellow and also some solids deposits colored brown ... and a bad smell... never understood the reason of this smell . But it was worse because without wind, the smell was concentrated ... and I had to return . I guess next time I am going to take a vane with me to there . Also need a TV to watch the Big Brother... and a boat because the yellow liquid in growing up.

This post has been edited by jofre: 03 March 2010 - 06:49 PM

[vladmir21]

Some say that the Moon is really a hollowed out planetoid that is hollowed by aliens, and they use the Moon as an undercover spaceship, to control Earth and its fertility of the species, especially human.