Small-Scale Volcanism on the Lunar Mare

"Small Shield Volcanism on the Lunar Mare," (figure 1.) EPSC 2013-875 Plescia, Robinson & Joliff. Constructs in Mare Tranquillitatis. a: low-relief, low-slope with central crater; b "pancake-shaped"; c and d': hummocky, steep-sided , gc: ghost crater. LROC Wide Angle Camera high-angle incident mosaic, centered near 7.5°N, 37.5°E [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University] .

Plescia, Robinson & Jolliff
Johns Hopkins APL
Arizona State University
Washington University of St. Louis

"Small shield volcanoes having low relief and gentle slopes are scattered across the lunar mare. These features represent the terminal phases of mare volcanism and are formed by short-duration, low-volume eruptions. Composition and eruption dynamics may have varied as the morphology and color of the shields vary. There appears to be regional correlations of morphometric properties indicating larger-scale organization of the eruptions.

"Data from LRO and other missions now provide the ability to characterize each dome in terms of areal extent, topography, morphology, and color properties in unprecedented detail allowing for an analysis of their origin.

"Here, a subset of the domes are interpreted to represent a volcanic style characterized by small volume eruptions that built low-relief constructs (Fig. 1). This style of volcanism has been termed plains volcanism [14] and is common in the Tharsis region."

Small Shield Volcanism on the Lunar Mare, European Planetary Science Conference 2013, Vol. 8, #875; J.B. Plescia, Johns Hopkins University Applied Science Laboratory; M.S. Robinson, Arizona State University; B. Jolliff, Washington University, St. Louis

Small-scale shield volcanic vent structure ("d." in WAC mosaic above) south of Rupes Cauchy in Mare Tranquillitatis, near 7.5°N, 37.5°E; Vent strongly presents features resembling those of the Ina structure. 6.2 km-wide field of view from LROC NAC mosaic M190351657LR, LRO orbit 13098, April 29, 2012; 41.95° angle of incidence, resolution 0.95 meters per pixel from 113.33 km. Full-size versions HERE [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Marshall's new-generation lunar lander flies again

Overcast skies didn't deter the "Mighty Eagle," flying high above the historic F-1 test stand, once used to test turbopumps for the Saturn booster first stage engines [NASA/MSFC/Dennis Olive].

Long under development, completing a round of flight test objectives, following up on a successful August 28 pre-programmed flight profile test, the "Mighty Eagle," NASA robotic prototype lunar lander, flew to 30.48 meters (100 feet) and descended gently to a controlled landing during a successful free flight September 5 at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama.

Guided by autonomous rendezvous and capture software, the vehicle located an on-ground target using an on-board camera and then flew directly to the target on its own. 

The flight of August 28 followed a pre-programmed flight profile, but the test on September 5 operated "closed loop," with the vehicle seeking and finding its target using internal software to guide its flight.

"The ‘Mighty Eagle’ had a great flight, fulfilling the objectives we had for this test -- finding and landing on its target using a closed-loop system," said Greg Chavers, test lead for the project. "Given this is one of our last tests in this series, it is a worthy finale of a lot of people’s hard work -- including our young engineers. They did a remarkable job running today’s flight."

New for this test, the "Mighty Eagle" project managers turned over the vehicle’s keys to three young Marshall engineers, Adam Lacock, flight manager; Jake Parton, test conductor; and Logan Kennedy, systems engineer.

Nicknamed the "Mighty Eagle" after one of the characters in the popular "Angry Birds" game, the vehicle is a three-legged prototype that resembles an actual flight lander design. It is 4 feet tall and 8 feet in diameter and, when fueled, weighs 700 pounds. It is a “green” vehicle, fueled by 90 percent pure hydrogen peroxide The vehicle is guided by an on-board computer that activates thrusters to power the craft’s movements.

"We’ve surpassed our expectations and flew the most challenging run to date," said Mike Hannan, a controls engineer in Marshall's Engineering Directorate. "It was an overcast, extremely humid day, and we were concerned steam might block the vehicle’s camera. We didn’t see that, and the lander sought and found its target successfully."

"It was an invaluable experience managing today’s test,” added Lacock. "This is the kind of experience young engineers, like myself, need to learn more about flight mechanics, vehicle hardware and project management. It was a good day for our team."

NASA will use the "Mighty Eagle" to mature the technology needed to develop a new generation of small, smart, versatile robotic landers capable of achieving scientific and exploration goals on the surface of the moon, asteroids or other airless bodies.

The "Mighty Eagle" was developed by the Marshall Center and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., for NASA’s Planetary Sciences Division, Headquarters Science Mission Directorate. Key partners in this project include the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation, which includes the Science Applications International Corporation, Dynetics Corp., and Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc., all of Huntsville.

Related and Background Posts:
Mighty Eagle lander 100 foot flight at Redstone (November 4, 2011)
New Robotic Lander Prototype skates tests (January 29, 2011)
NASA update; ILN Anchor Nodes and Robotic Lunar Lander Project (August 17, 2010)
The Lunar Quest Program and the International Lunar Network (September 6, 2009)

Shackleton harbors ice after all

Spoke too soon! When JAXA released this Kaguya Terrain Camera image, showing the deep interior of Shackleton crater for the first time in 2008, scientists claimed it disappointingly showed no indication of ice, though no one yet can say how a slurry of lunar volatiles might appear. Now, however, researchers analyzing laser altimetry returned by the LOLA instrument on-board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) cite strong evidence of ice content in the permanently shadowed interior.  The Moon's south pole is serendipitously situated on Shackleton's rim, directly under all of LRO's nearly twenty thousand polar orbits since 2009, affording extraordinary study [JAXA/SELENE]..

Jennifer Chu

MIT News

If humans are ever to inhabit the moon, the lunar poles may well be the location of choice: Because of the small tilt of the lunar spin axis, the poles contain regions of near-permanent sunlight, needed for power, and regions of near-permanent darkness containing ice — both of which would be essential resources for any lunar colony.

The area around the moon’s Shackleton crater could be a prime site. Scientists have long thought that the crater — whose interior is a permanently sunless abyss — may contain reservoirs of frozen water. But inconsistent observations over the decades have cast doubt on whether ice might indeed exist in the shadowy depths of the crater, which sits at the moon’s south pole.

Now scientists from MIT, Brown University, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and other institutions have mapped Shackleton crater with unprecedented detail, finding possible evidence for small amounts of ice on the crater’s floor. Using (the LOLA) laser altimeter on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft, the team essentially illuminated the crater’s interior with laser light, measuring its albedo, or natural reflectance. The scientists found that the crater’s floor is in fact brighter than that of other nearby craters — an observation consistent with the presence of ice, which the team calculates may make up 22 percent of the material within a micron-thick layer on the crater’s floor.
 

http://youtu.be/j2NAZODSdwM 

The group published its findings today in the journal Nature.

In addition to the possible evidence of ice, the group’s map of Shackleton reveals a “remarkably preserved” crater that has remained relatively unscathed since its formation more than three billion years ago. The crater’s floor is itself pocked with several smaller craters, which may have formed as part of the collision that created Shackleton.

The crater, named after the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, is more than 12 miles wide and two miles deep — about as deep as Earth’s oceans. Maria Zuber, the team’s lead investigator and the E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, describes the crater’s interior as “extremely rugged … It would not be easy to crawl around in there.”

Mapping the dark. Slipping past the Moon's south pole on the brightly lit rim of Shackleton crater, the dark of the permanently shadowed interior of the crater quickly overtakes a very steep crater wall, like the terrestrial oceans. LRO has skipped through thousands of polar orbits eventually carrying the vehicle over every area on the Moon's surface and over Shackleton, high at the top of everyone's list of priority targets, during every orbit,   LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) M142464150L, LRO orbit 6128, October 23, 2010, 89.21° angle of incidence, 0.87 meters resolution from 41.91 kilometers [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

The group was able to map the crater’s elevations and brightness in extreme detail, thanks in part to the LRO’s path: The spacecraft orbits the moon from pole to pole as the moon rotates underneath. With each orbit, the LRO’s laser altimeter maps a different slice of the moon, with each slice containing measurements of both poles. The upshot is that any terrain at the poles — Shackleton crater in particular — is densely recorded. Zuber and her colleagues took advantage of the spacecraft’s orbit to obtain more than 5 million measurements of the polar crater from more than 5,000 orbital tracks.

“We decided we would study the living daylights out of this crater,” Zuber says. “From the incredible density of observations we were able to make an extremely detailed topographic map.”

The team used the (LOLA) to map the crater’s elevations based on the time it took for laser light to bounce back from the moon’s surface: The longer it took, the lower the terrain’s elevation. Through these measurements, the group mapped the crater’s floor and the slope of its walls.

A quaking theory.The researchers also used the laser altimeter to measure the crater’s brightness, sending out pulses of infrared light at a specific wavelength. The crater’s surface absorbed some light based on its own natural albedo, reflecting the rest back to the spacecraft. The researchers calculated the difference, and mapped the relative brightness throughout the crater’s floor and walls.

While the crater’s floor was relatively bright, Zuber and her colleagues observed that its walls were even brighter. The finding was at first puzzling: Scientists had thought that if ice were anywhere in a crater, it would be on the floor, where very little sunlight penetrates. The upper walls of Shackleton crater, in comparison, are occasionally illuminated, which could evaporate any ice that accumulates.

How to explain the bright walls? The team studied the measurements, and came up with a theory: Every once in a while, the moon experiences seismic shaking brought on by collisions, or gravitational tides from Earth. Such “moonquakes” may have caused Shackleton’s walls to slough off older, darker soil, revealing newer, brighter soil underneath.

Until very recently luna incongnita, the permanently shadowed 10.3 km-wide interior of Shackleton, shouldering the Moon's south pole (blue arrow), today seems much like hundreds of other lunar craters of similar age and dimension. Its ink-black interior has steadily been brightly unveiled in a steady build-up of laser data points collected over the course of three years in polar orbit by the LOLA instrument on LRO. As it is on Earth, however, in Real Estate, "location is everything" [NASA/GSFC/LOLA].

Zuber says there may be multiple explanations for the observed brightness throughout the crater: For example, newer material may be exposed along its walls, while ice may be mixed in with its floor. Her team’s ultra-high-resolution map, she says, provides strong evidence for both.

Ben Bussey, staff scientist at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, says the group’s evidence for ice in Shackleton crater may help determine the course for future lunar missions.

“Ice in the polar regions has been sort of an enigmatic thing for some time … I think this is another piece of evidence for the possibility of ice,” Bussey says. “To truly answer the question, we’ll have to send a lunar lander, and these results will help us select where to send a lander.”

Zuber adds that the group’s topographic map will help researchers understand crater formation and study other uncharted areas of the moon.

“I will never get over the thrill when I see a new terrain for the first time,” Zuber says. “It’s that sort of motivation that causes people to explore to begin with. Of course, we’re not risking our lives like the early explorers did, but there is a great personal investment in all of this for a lot of people.”

The research was supported by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission under the auspices of NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate and Science Mission Directorate.

Japan's scientists may have leaped to conclusions when they over-confidently announced there was no ice inside Shackleton (upper left), after releasing the first image of the crater's interior a few years ago, but their iconic high-definition image of an orbital Earthrise from November 2007 still takes the breath away [JAXA/NHK/SELENE].

CME's could 'sandblast' the Moon

Dust off: Images from computer simulations of the lunar calcium exosphere during a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME-left) and slow solar wind (SW-right) condition. Red and yellow indicate a relatively high abundance of calcium ions and blue, purple, and black indicate a low abundance. A CME produces a much denser exosphere than the slow solar wind. View movie of simulation HERE [NASA/Johns Hopkins-APL].

Bill Steigerwald
NASA GSFC


Solar storms and associated Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) can significantly erode the lunar surface according to a new set of computer simulations by NASA scientists. In addition to removing a surprisingly large amount of material from the lunar surface, this could be a major method of atmospheric loss for planets like Mars that are unprotected by a global magnetic field.

The research is being led by Rosemary Killen at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., as part of the Dynamic Response of the Environment At the Moon (DREAM) team within the NASA Lunar Science Institute.

CMEs are basically an intense gust of the normal solar wind, a diffuse stream of electrically conductive gas called plasma that's blown outward from the surface of the Sun into space. A strong CME may contain around a billion tons of plasma moving at up to a million miles per hour in a cloud many times the size of Earth.

The moon has just the barest wisp of an atmosphere, technically called an exosphere because it is so tenuous, which leaves it vulnerable to CME effects. The plasma from CMEs impacts the lunar surface, and atoms from the surface are ejected in a process called "sputtering."

"We found that when this massive cloud of plasma strikes the moon, it acts like a sandblaster and easily removes volatile material from the surface," said William Farrell, DREAM team lead at NASA Goddard. "The model predicts 100 to 200 tons of lunar material – the equivalent of 10 dump truck loads – could be stripped off the lunar surface during the typical 2-day passage of a CME."

This is the first time researchers have attempted to predict the effects of a CME on the moon. "Connecting various models together to mimic conditions during solar storms is a major goal of the DREAM project," says Farrell.

Read the NASA/GSFC News Release, HERE.

Dream Team - NASA/GSFC/NLSI

New map of lunar titanium and Iron presented

The above image accompanying many reports of the LROC titanium and iron survey is everywhere being misidentified as showing the boundary area between Mare Serenitatis and Tranquillitatis. It's not clear why Figures 1 - 4 listed along with the official conference news posting were apparently not released at the news conference reported below. The image above may be a part of a larger global mosaic and looks suspiciously like early WAC color test articles released by LROC more than a year ago. Regardless, the area shown in the image above is interesting enough but shows an area mostly south of the equator and southwest of Copernicus on the Moon's nearside.

Map showing concentration of iron and titanium in Nearside maria. Iron and titanium are part of the mineral ilmenite (FeTiO3 ), which has the ability to capture and retain gases, such as hydrogen and helium, from the solar wind. An isotope of helium, helium-3, can be found in ilmenite and is especially valuable for nuclear power production [NASA/USGS/Community College of Baltimore County].

Paris (AFP) — A new map of the Moon has revealed an abundance of titanium ore that is up to 10 times richer than on Earth, a finding that could one day lead to a lunar mining colony, astronomers said on Friday.

The discovery was made thanks to a camera aboard the US Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which swept the surface of the Moon, scrutinizing it in seven different light wavelengths.

Mark Robinson of Arizona State University, who presented the research at a conference in Nantes, western France with Brett Denevi of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, sifted through the data for telltale jumps in the ratio of ultra-violet to visible light.

NASA/USGS/Community College of Baltimore County

They established this signature thanks to rock samples brought back to Earth by Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972 and images of the area around the mission's landing site by the Hubble space telescope.

"Looking up at the Moon, its surface appears painted with shades of grey, at least to the human eye," explained Robinson.

"But with the right instruments, the Moon can appear colorful.

"The maria [lunar plains] appear reddish in some places and blue in others.

"Although subtle, these color variations tell us important things about the chemistry and evolution of the lunar surface. They indicate the titanium and iron abundance, as well as the maturity of a lunar soil."

Titanium is as strong as steel but nearly half as light, which makes it a highly desired -- and also very expensive -- metal.

On Earth, titanium is found, at the very most, in around one percent of similar types of ore. But the new map found abundances in the lunar maria that range from about one percent to 10 percent, the conference organizers said in a press release. In the lunar highlands, abundance was around one percent.

The meeting gathers, for the first time, members of the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences.

The find offers a double potential bounty, they said.

"Lunar titanium is mostly found in the mineral ilmenite, a compound containing iron, titanium and oxygen," they said.

"Future miners living and working on the Moon could break down ilmenite to liberate these elements.

"In addition, Apollo data shows that titanium-rich minerals are more efficient at retaining particles from the solar wind, such as helium and hydrogen. These gases would also provide a vital resource for future human inhabitants of lunar colonies."

The exposed upper 3 centimeters surface of the Moon is turned over, or "gardened" at least once every 2 million years. The visible surface has been estimated to reach "optical maturity," or "OMAT," over the course of 900 million years. Direct and remote examination has confirmed that the Moon's deeper topography retains a high-fidelity record of it's stormy 4.74 billion year history, recording the history of the Solar System and Earth while a continuous make over by solar radiation and heavier elements implanted by cosmic ray bombardment. The abundance of Helium-3 and Helium 4 is thought to be related to the abundance of iron and titanium. From: "Global inventory of Helium-3 in lunar regoliths estimated by a multi-channel microwave radiometer on Chang'E-1," WenZhe Fa and Yaqiu Jin (2010), Chinese Science Bulletin, Vol. 55, No. 35 [Maurice Collins].

Earth's Moon from MESSENGER

Image of Earth's moon from MESSENGER's Wide Angle Camera. The Moon's south pole, farside highlands, west Oceanus Procellarum and Mare Orientale are prominent [NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington].

Sarah Braden
LROC News System

The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft became the first spacecraft ever to enter Mercury's orbit! The insertion burn occurred 18 March 2011 at 12:45 am UTC (17 March, 8:45 EDT). The MESSENGER spacecraft traveled about 4.9 billion miles to reach the point for orbital insertion. Read more about the successful MESSENGER orbital insertion!

Today's Featured Image is the Moon as seen from the MESSENGER spacecraft on July 31, 2005, less than a year after the spacecraft's launch from Cape Canaveral. The lunar image was taken by the MESSENGER Wide Angle Camera (WAC), which is part of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS). At the time when the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 992,814 kilometers (616,906 miles) from the Earth.

This image was not taken simply because the Moon is beautiful and inspiring; it serves to help the MESSENGER team calibrate the camera and spectrometer. The Moon is a good calibration standard because its reflectance and color have been measured with many instruments, so it is useful to make comparisons between instruments with different characteristics. In other words, it is a check on the quality of the Earth-based calibration.

LROC is an important new contributor to our understanding of how light interacts with the lunar surface especially in ultraviolet wavelengths. In particular, the new WAC color images will help to calibrate the MESSENGER MASCS spectrometer, which measured the Moon at the same time the MDIS camera snapped this picture.

The MESSENGER MDIS view of the Moon is centered about -60°, 280°. Mare Orientale is the the small dark spot in the upper left. For a closeup of Orientale see the recent LROC Featured Image. The same viewpoint as the MESSENGER image was used to create a higher resolution view from the LROC WAC.

LROC Wide Angle Camera 400 meter/pixel orthographic projection, similar to the field of view captured from MESSENGER, July 31, 2005. View the full-sized contextual LROC WAC mosaic HERE [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

After the orbital insertion, scientists will test the spacecraft systems to make sure that all the instruments are in good working order. It is important to verify that all the instruments operate well in the harsh thermal environment around Mercury (currently Mercury is only about 0.3 AU from the Sun!). On April 4, 2011, the science phase of the MESSENGER mission will begin and the orbital science data from Mercury will be returned to Earth almost every day for at least a year! For more news about the MESSENGER mission, visit the NASA news page.

Congratulations to the awesome MESSENGER spacecraft operations team at APL!

Check out the MESSENGER website to learn more about the mission goals!

Water cycle on the Moon remains a mystery

Schematic showing a daily cycle of hydration, loss and rehydration on the lunar surface. [University of Maryland/McREL].

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today

"Water cycle on the Moon" is a phrase that many people – including lunar scientists – were never expecting to hear. This surprising new finding of ubiquitous water on the surface of the Moon, revealed and confirmed by three different spacecraft last year, has been one of the main topics of recent discussion and study by lunar researchers. But figuring out the cycle of how water appears and disappears over the lunar day remains elusive. As of now, scientists suspect a few different processes that could be delivering water and hydroxyl (OH) to the lunar surface: meteorites or comets hitting the Moon, outgassing from the Moon's interior, or the solar wind interacting with the lunar regolith. But so far, none of the details of any of these processes are adding up.

"When we do the model, we assume the way that the water is lost is through photodissociation, and so that sets the timescale," Hurley told Universe Today. "And using that timescale the amount that is coming in through the solar wind or micrometeorites can't add up to the amount observed if it is in steady state, so something is not jiving."

Dana Hurley from The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory is part of team of scientists attempting to model the lunar water cycle, and she discussed the work at the NASA Lunar Science Institute's third annual Lunar Forum at Ames Research Center, July 20-22, 2010.

(Heads up to Lunar Mark)
Read the full article, HERE.

See Also: The Four Flavors of Lunar Water
Dr. Paul D. Spudis

Piece by piece, LRO builds the lunar puzzle

LRO's Mini-RF has detailed a important swath of Oceans Procellarum, Above and Below struck upon the Google Earth (v.5+) lunar globe. The "spectacular image strip crossed one of the most volcanically active regions of the Moon, in central Oceanus Procellarum. At top is the Cobra's Head (24.7° N, 310.7° E; ~ 7 km diameter), source vent of the long and sinuous Vallis Schroter, the giant lava channel on Aristarchus Plateau. The full strip continues southward through lava-filled Herodotus, then down the bright and familiar southern wall of the high plateau, into the wider Procellarum basin. Numerous secondaries from the fresher Aristarchus impact next to Herodotus are evident and the strip crosses at least three of the sinuous lava channels to its abrupt end within the Marius Hills complex, including Rima Marius itself (below). The full strip runs from about 7° to 25.5° North latitude roughly along the 311° (49° West) Meridian. The twelve kilometers wide strip is seen above and below has here been superimposed in three dimensions on the default NASA global photography and topography available everywhere on "Google Moon," except within the Near Side Apollo orbital corridor.

The full version of the Hadley Rille LRO Mini-RF image composed seen inside the images below is available HERE (614 KB). That Mini-RF image has been added to the multiple-spacecraft (and ground truth) study below of the sinuous Rima Hadley, site of the Apollo 15 mission in 1971. The rille is typically over 1000 meters across and about 300 meters deep. The bright walls of the rille in the Mini-RF image is caused by spacecraft-facing slopes and the greater reflectivity of rougher ground. Bright spots on the smooth mare material in the Mini-RF are caused by fields of surface rocks acting as small corner reflectors for Mini-RF radar waves. Facing northeast in the montage below only the northern half of the full Mini-RF release can be seen. The full release covers an area 12 by 54 kilometers [NASA/GSFC/JHAPL].

New robotic lunar lander test bed

Marshall Space Flight Center is testing a new robotic lunar lander test bed that will aid in the development of a new generation of multi-use landers for robotic space exploration. The test article is equipped with thrusters that guide the lander, one set of which controls the vehicle's attitude that directs the altitude and landing. On the test lander, an additional thruster offsets the effect of Earth’s gravity so that the other thrusters can operate as they would in a lunar environment. MSFC is partnered with John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation for this project. Image Credit: NASA

Mini-SAR imaging radar on the Chandrayaan-1

In carefully threading through the much anticipated and voluminous abstracts and presentations listed on the program for next month's Lunar & Planetary Science Conference XL (2009), as one might expect, there is much new from investigators for Japan's Kaguya and India's Chandrayaan 1 lunar orbiter missions, and much else besides.

Veteran PI Paul Spudis is the natural lead author of Abstract 1098, The Mini-SAR imaging radar on the Chandrayaan-1 Mission to the Moon, a presentation listed on the first of two full sessions devoted to science from those two missions along with China's Chang'E 1.

Because the abstracts for the presentations, posters and "print-only" studies are now on-line, we proceed with our own presentation of selected highlights from the conference schedule, hoping to draw your attention to this, the 40th annual LPSC since 1969 alone with the good science we anticipate will be unveiled there.

Chandrayaan's Mini-SAR is primarily an American contribution to India's mission, with contributed oversight from the LPS Institute itself, Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory, the National Radio Astronomical Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, NASM in Washington, DC, the University of Hawaii at Honolulu, ISRO and JPL.

"The possible existence of ice in the polar cold traps of the Moon continues to be debated. Clementine conducted a bistatic radar experiment in 1994, which supported the idea of an ice deposit within Shackleton crater near the south pole. However this result generated controversy and there is still disagreement whether the observed polarization anomalies are due to ice."

"However there is little argument related to the discovery by Lunar Prospector of enhanced hydrogen levels in the polar regions. The question is whether this hydrogen is in the form of water ice (or hydrogen). By determining the backscatter properties inside the dark areas near the poles we will constrain the nature and occurrence of water ice deposits on the Moon."

"While no remote measurement can definitively answer the question of whether ice exists at the lunar poles, an orbiting SAR provides the most robust method of obtaining a positive indication of ice deposits. With an orbital SAR, ALL areas on the Moon can be seen. The 6° inclination of the Moon’s orbital plane around the Earth means that large areas of permanent shadow that might contain water ice can never be seen from Earth and all polar areas that can be seen from Earth are viewed at high incidence angles, which reduces the coherent backscatter predicted for ice deposits. However all permanently shadowed regions will be imaged multiple times by an orbiting radar with incidence angles favorable for determining their scattering properties."

"Mini-SAR uses S-band (2380 MHz), has an illumination incidence angle of 35°, and image strips have spatial resolution of 75 meters per pixel. During the observation opportunities given to the instrument, it will image in SAR mode both poles every 2-hr orbit, covering both polar regions in a single 28-day mapping window."

Read LPSC XL #1098 HERE.

Johns Hopkins APL tasked with Polar Prelims

Frank D. Roylance
The Baltimore Sun

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab will help the agency prepare for those missions. The lab, near Laurel, won a contract to lead a four-year, $6.9 million study for NASA.A team of 30 scientists from several institutions, led by APL planetary scientist Ben Bussey, will use data from lunar missions to provide basic information for such a trip.

Specifically, the team will: Read the list HERE.

Spudis flies with Chandrayaan

Noted planetary geologist Paul Spudis has been named as Principal Investigator for one of two American instruments on their way to the Moon on-board Chandrayaan 1.

The Indian Space Research Organisation's (IRSO) Lunar orbiter passed a 150,000 km Earth orbital apogee, Sunday, already higher than any spacecraft launched by India. Eight nations are participating in a suite of eleven remote sensing instruments on Chandrayaan's mission.

Chandrayaan 1 was successfully launched from Sriharikota, on the southeastern coast of the Sub-Continent, October 22.

Spudis is the immediate-past director of the USRA's NASA-chartered Lunar and Planetary Science Institute in Houston.

Spudis is now PI for the team, headed by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Research Laboratory and the Naval Research Laboratory, that designed and built the Mini Synthetic Aperture Radar (MiniSAR), imaging radar to map the Lunar poles. MiniSAR will map the permanently-shadowed abyssal craters and valleys at the highest lattitude, in search of water ice and other volatiles.

"This has been a controversial area of investigation for the last decade," explained Lunar and Planetary Institute Director Dr. Stephen Mackwell, "The inclusion of the MiniSAR instrument in the Chandrayaan-1 mission will allow us to collect information on these deposits by mapping them from an instrument in lunar orbit - a first in the exploration of the moon."

U.S. missions Clementine (1994) and Lunar Prospector (1998) both detected the unique signature of Hydrogen, in and around both Lunar poles, with Neutron detectors designed to separate elemental signatures resulting from the spillation of Cosmic Rays breaking about on and immediately below the Moon's surface.

The public release, last week, of images inside Shakelton Crater, taken from the Terrain Camera on-board Japan's Kaguya reportedly eliminated the likelihood of ice at the Lunar poles, but most planetary scientist were not surprised by the images. Few were expecting any water ice there to be immediately visible, in the form of snow or a frozen pond. Most believe what volatiles or water ice there might be at the Lunar poles to be buried or well-mixed with dusty regolith.

Hydrogen and other "volatiles" cannot freely range on the lunar surface, and since the Apollo Era the Moon has been considered among "the driest places in the Solar System."

The Moon's "exosphere," however, has since been interpreted as very dynamic, rather than static. The constant rain of cometary water ice and charged particles are thought to literally shatter and bounce all over the Moon, some of it coming to rest in the dusty "Cold Traps," permanently shadowed from disbursing by proton-packed Solar Wind.

Over a four and a half billion year history, the Moon's manifest history of impacts large and small is thought to have gathered many tons of volatiles in these Cold Traps.

NASA's Long-term plans call for a semi-permanent manned presense on the rim of Shackleton Crater, overlooking the 20 mile wide, permanently darkened interior, where some portion may have naturally stored the stuff that both life and rocket fuel are made of.

Spudis, as both a scientist and director, has been closely associated with Lunar and Martian science for thirty years. An penultimate "multi-tasker," Spudis has probably forgotten more about the Moon than most NASA directors will ever know.

Mission water on Moon (ISRO)

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT The Telegraph Calcutta

Bangalore - A US team yesterday visited an Indian Space Research Organisation facility where American equipment is being integrated into Chandrayaan-1 to look for water and ice on the moon.

The Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (miniSAR) will help India’s first lunar mission establish whether the permanently shadowed regions of the moon’s poles have water in any form.

The miniSAR has been developed by the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) of Johns Hopkins University, and the Naval Air Warfare Centre. The delegation was headed by Ken Ulman, the executive of Howard County in Maryland, where the APL is one of the largest private sector employers.

US space agency Nasa is expected to pay Isro at least $10 million for carrying the miniSAR and tracking its probes, officials said.

“The moon is believed to be very dry, but recent discoveries suggest the existence of water and ice in its polar regions, which are never illuminated by the sun,” a scientist said.