Posted on 08/23/2010 11:07:10 AM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK
By now, most of us know there is water on the moon. But did you know that it comes in three flavors and there is so much of it--158 billion gallons--that it could fill all of Seattle's water needs for three years?
It turns out there is water all over the lunar landscape, which is rather astonishing since astronomers were convinced for such a long time that it was bone dry.
Discovery.com and Space.com report this all changed when actual measurements were taken using the Mini-SAR and Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3 or "M-cubed") instruments on India's Chandrayaan-1 moon probe and NASA's recent LCROSS mission when the moon was "bombed."
There are three flavors of moon water:
1] Thick, nearly pure crater ice
2] Fluffy mix of ice crystals and dirt
3] Thin layer of ice that covers much of the lunar surface
One mystery still to be solved: Scientists don't know why some of the lunar craters contain pure ice, while others have an ice-soil mixture. One idea: The moon water is generated by more than one source. "Some of the water may be made right there on the moon," Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas told Space.com. "Protons in the solar wind can make small amounts of water continuously on the lunar surface by interacting with metal oxides in the rocks. But some of the water is probably deposited on the moon from other places in the solar system."
Why is water on the moon an important discovery? Water is not only the key ingredient for life as we know it, but also would be essential if we were to ever establish a human outpost on the moon.
"It's a different world up there, and we've barely scratched the surface," Spudis told Space.com. "Who knows what discoveries lie ahead?"
I was specifically referring to this part of the announcement:
” ... this all changed when actual measurements were taken using the Mini-SAR and Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3 or “M-cubed”) instruments on India’s Chandrayaan-1 moon probe ... “
Right. LCROSS examined parts of the moon that had never been fully explored before, and certainly different areas than the cursory & superficial exploration made by the Astronauts. Simply put, the Astronauts had no way to examine anything much below a few inches to a foot of ancient lunar "dust", nor did they have any ability to look deeply into these craters on the dark side of the Moon, where some of this water is now known to exist in frozen state.
It's much like standing on top of a Blue Ridge mountain peak in the 10th century BC, and not seeing any coal, although clearly we now know centuries later coal is incredibly abundant in that region. The same could be said about the aquifers located beneath Death Valley. Standing in Death Valley, one would be hard pressed to find much water. But it's there - plenty of it. You just need to know where to look.
Ok thanks for the information. It is much appreciated.
Yup.
Open 1999. Closed by Obama's budget cuts 2010.
That's *not* funny.
Of all the remakes they are making, you think they would have done Space 1999 already, but maybe they’d have to call it Space 2099?
Scientists don't know why some of the lunar craters contain pure ice, while others have an ice-soil mixture.Some are more recent than others.
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They have been trying to remake it since the early 90's. It was going to be called "Space:2009", but that ship has sailed, clearly. I've heard they're still trying to get it launched, but it's in the embryonic stage.
I agree though, it's surprising it hasn't been done already considering I saw a remake of "The A Team" just a few weeks ago.
There are actual reports claiming to have seen our folks living there running around loose outside of dwellings without helmets.
I'm confident water isn't the only valuable resource on, in, or under the lunar surface.
That has yet to be discovered.
Whoops! Thanks KoRn!
There’s not a lot of water on the Moon, just more than previously thought. And it’s still not a lot. The Moon, having 1/100th the mass of the Earth, doesn’t hold on to gas, and water winds up transitioning directly from ice to vapor pretty easily in a vacuum or near-vacuum.
The Apollo missions didn’t spend an awful lot of time on the surface, and much of that was spent in rock retrieval, plus they had to photograph each rock six or eight times. :’) The main discovery was that impact was over 99 percent dominant in the “geology” of the Moon.
Because neither one can whistle, is the official answer. Though, as the book/computer points out, the laser could be used to modulate a noise source and thus create a whistle.
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