Details on Goddard LRO science

Lunar Prospector data: hydrogen distribution near Lunar North Pole

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland outside Washington is a busy place these days, preparing for travel to the Moon on this side of the American manned spaceflight Gap and next year, not twelve years from now. Details of the awarding of two experiments to fly on LCROSS/LRO in 2009 were made public yesterday, and Goddard is set to investigate two intriguing lunar mysteries.

Among the hopes riding on the success of LCROSS/LRO in 2009 will be Russia's LEND neutron detector and Goddard will be standing by to analyze a hoped-for flood of information vital to any permanent human presence. The primary mission of the LCROSS bus will be a variety of methods to confirm a possible distribution of water ice in permanently shadowed swaths on the floor of abyssal craters at both lunar poles.

First detected in 1999 by Prospector, the sheerest hint of a signature of hydrogen isotopes led selenologists to conclude an unlikely and unknown trace of water, presumably the remnant of cometary bombardment, exists at the lunar poles, twice as much near the north as detected near the south lunar pole, behind Malapert Mountain.

Before raising expectations any further, however, it's important to remember the existance of "water on the moon" isn't what science will allow as a description. Instead, it is to "determine the compositional state (elemental, isotopic, mineralogic) and compostitional distribution (lateral and depth) of the volitile component in lunar polar regions."

"The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter," according to Goddard's release on Wednesday, "will conduct a one-year primary mission exploring the moon, taking measurements to identify future robotic and human landing sites."

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, will ultimately give its all in its search for lunar water when it impacts "a permanently shadowed crater near a lunar south pole to search for evidence of polar water ice."

"Scientists with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center will help make this possible by analyzing the data coming from LRO, which also is being built and managed by Goddard. One proposal will search for hydrogen and water ice deposits in the permanently-shadowed craters of the lunar poles," Goddard explains.

Their second winning proposal may be less well-understood. Goddard scientists may get to the heart of a suspected origin for some "transcient phenomena," the subtle shifting shadow and flashes of light long documented to occur coincident to the passing terminator, now believed by many to be "electrically charged dust, propelled across the moon by electric fields on the lunar surface."