Surprising gas from LAMP

From Lunar Pioneer Album 3 -

Southwest Research Institute's LRO/LAMP website, redirected from LRO's main site at Goddard Space Flight Center, remains virtually unchanged since before the launch of LRO, and it's public website (if you can find it) refers to operations in the future. The "Soon" in the "Coming Soon!" above is characteristic of a genuine "ghost site."

EDITOR'S NOTE & OPINION: Out of deep respect for the outstanding, cutting-edge work accomplished by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), and because of their contribution to the success of the on-going mission of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we're pleased to post the following news release, related to the journal Science publishing research related to the impact of the LCROSS mission, one year ago.

However, of all the experiments and teams contributing to the LRO mission, launched at a huge cost to the American taxpayer, we would be remiss in not expressing our deep displeasure with an apparent complete lack of public outreach by those operating the Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP). Of all the LRO instruments, only one other has been more disrespectful of the wider community of proponents of lunar exploration. Only the CRaTER project, whose long publicized website at Boston University has simply disappeared, has done a worse job of keeping the public informed as to their progress.

The Southwest Research Institute's outreach has, since long before LRO/LCROSS was launched on June 18, 2009, kept tantalizing messages posted online advertising features "coming soon," for example, that never arrive, and the team's public information stewardship receives a a failing grade equal at least to that deserved by Boston University and the CRaTER experiment team.

Of all the LRO experiment public outreach efforts, that of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) has alone been outstanding, and they deserve to be highly commended.

The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) public information guardians tried, for a time, to make a solid effort and unfortunately also dropped the ball. An LOLA "Image of the Week" feature has now not been undated since the middle of July, in a ridiculous state of affairs, a mocking feature posted on the NASA and GSFC primary LRO public websites.

Diviner and the Mini-RF teams have at least made the effort of keeping citizen-scientists updated, without promising more than they could deliver, and when delivering data products, delivering solid reports. The Russian Institute of Science LEND mission has made results available at least with publicly available monographs and reports.

We take great exception with the presumption expressed by the constant silence out of the Southwest Research Institute and to their apparent contempt for the those interested in the results of their part in the landmark mission of the LRO.

- Joel Raupe
Raleigh, North Carolina

-------
"LRO's LAMP ultraviolet spectrograph observes
LCROSS blast, detects surprising gases in impact plume"

San Antonio — Oct. 21, 2010 — NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and its sophisticated suite of instruments have determined that hydrogen, mercury and other volatile substances are present in permanently shaded soils on the Moon, according to a paper published today in Science.

The Lunar Crater Remote Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which launched with LRO, was intentionally crashed onto the Moon's surface Oct. 9, 2009, while LRO instruments watched. About 90 seconds after LCROSS hit the Moon, LRO flew past the debris plume raised by the impact, while the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) and other instruments collected data. Using these data, LAMP team members eventually confirmed the presence of the gases molecular hydrogen, carbon monoxide and atomic mercury, along with smaller amounts of calcium and magnesium, also in gas form.

"We had hints from Apollo soils and models that the volatiles we see in the impact plume have been long collecting near the Moon's polar regions," says Dr. Randy Gladstone, LAMP acting principal investigator, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "Now we have confirmation."

The point of impact was the Cabeus crater near the lunar south pole. The tiny tilt of the Moon's rotation axis allows the floors of craters near the poles to be permanently shaded from direct sunshine. Without sunlight, temperatures in these areas can be as low as 35 to 100 Kelvin (degrees above absolute zero) – so cold that almost all volatiles that find their way there become trapped. Ongoing micrometeorite impacts cover them with dirt, further isolating them from exposure and possible escape.

LRO's findings are valuable to the future consideration of robotic and manned Moon base locations. Just as the poles have nearby crater floors with permanently shaded regions because of the Moon's orientation to the Sun, they also have nearby mountains and crater rims that are in nearly perpetual sunlight, which would enable the placement and operation of solar-powered systems and equipment. The discovery of water-ice and other resources in the region could also reduce the need to transport resources from Earth for use by astronauts.

"The detection of mercury in the soil was the biggest surprise, especially that it's in about the same abundance as the water detected by LCROSS," says Kurt Retherford, LAMP team member, also of SwRI. "Its toxicity could present a challenge for human exploration."

Developed by Southwest Research Institute, LAMP uses a novel method to peer into the darkness of the Moon's permanently shadowed regions. The ultraviolet spectrograph observes the nightside lunar surface using light from nearby space (and stars), which bathes all bodies in space in a soft glow. This Lyman-alpha glow is invisible to human eyes, but visible to LAMP as it reflects off the Moon. Analyses of the emissions, in collaboration with other LRO instruments, help determine lunar surface properties.

Following the LCROSS impact observations, LAMP continues its investigation of the ultraviolet reflectance properties and composition of the lunar surface and the composition of the lunar atmosphere. Since the conclusion of a one-year reconnaissance mission under NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, the Science Mission Directorate has assumed oversight of more in-depth investigations for the science instruments. During the science investigation, LAMP will shift into more detailed evaluations of the Moon's atmosphere and its variability.

The paper, "LRO-LAMP Observations of the LCROSS Impact Plume," by G.R. Gladstone, D.M. Hurley, K.D. Retherford, P.D. Feldman, W.R. Pryor, J.-Y. Chaufray, M. Versteeg, T.K. Greathouse, A.J. Steffl, H. Throop, J.W. Parker, D.E. Kaufmann, A.F. Egan, M.W. Davis, D.C. Slater, J. Mukherjee, P.F. Miles, A.R. Hendrix, A. Colaprete, and S.A. Stern, was published in the Oct. 22 issue of Science.