The Mystery of Shackleton Crater

Shackleton crater, Earth's Moon. Clockwise from top left: topography from (LOLA) laser altimetry, photography from ESA SMART-1 mission, lighting map (relative isolation - brighter indicates longer periods of illumination) from LROC data, Mini-RF Circular Polarization Ratio (CPR) image draped over shaded relief. The crater is about 20 km across.

Paul D. Spudis
The Once and Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space

Though unremarkable in appearance compared to the roughly 4,000 craters on the Moon in its size range, the 20 km diameter crater Shackleton has been the source of relentless scientific controversy for the past 20 years.  Shackleton is located at the south pole of the Moon; indeed, its near side rim is the precise location of the geographic pole itself.   Its location makes observation by Earth-based telescopes difficult and it was not well photographed by the Lunar Orbiter series (our principal source of lunar images) of the 1960s.  That all changed in 1994 with the flight of the joint DoD-NASA mission to the Moon, Clementine.

Clementine carried cameras that globally imaged the Moon in eleven visible and near-infrared wavelengths.  In addition, it mapped the surface and lighting of the poles of the Moon at uniform resolution over the course of almost three lunar days (74 Earth days).  When the Science Team first saw the south polar mosaic, the extent of darkness in the map was striking.  Because the Moon’s spin axis is close to perpendicular to the ecliptic plane, the Sun is always at the horizon at the lunar poles.  Instead of rising and setting, the Sun circles around the poles at or near the horizon.  Because of this grazing incidence, an area in a topographic depression may be in permanent shadow.  And so it appeared for Shackleton crater in the Clementine data, setting off bells in the heads of the Science Team.

Intuitive selection from HDTV still frame captured by Japan's lunar orbiter SELENE-1 (Kaguya) in 2008 shows Shackleton, with the Moon's south pole on its rim (upper left) in relation to Earth and Malapert Massif, part of the nearside rim of the ancient South Pole-Aitken impact basin, along the line of sight. Shackleton's interior and the craters between it and Malapert, are permanently shadowed interiors (PSR), unmapped before the 21st century [JAXA/NHK/SELENE].

A key controversy of the post-Apollo era was whether the lunar poles might contain water or not.  Although the Apollo samples had been studied and found to be “bone-dry,” we had not been to the poles on any Apollo mission.  We knew that any shadowed areas had to be extremely cold as well as permanently dark.  As water-bearing debris in the form of asteroids and comets constantly strike the Moon, it was thought that some of that water might get into a polar “cold trap” and would be kept there (essentially) forever – billions of years of impacting cosmic “debris” can add up.

Clementine was not configured to measure the presence of water, but a cleverly improvised experiment used the spacecraft’s data transmitter to beam radio waves into the dark regions near the poles and listen to their reflected echoes on the enormous (70 m) dish antenna of NASA’s Deep Space Network.  Interestingly, the reflections indicated an enhancement of “same sense” polarization within the (very large) resolution cell that contained Shackleton crater.  A collect of data from a nearby sunlit area (taken as an experimental control) did not show this peak.  The Clementine team interpreted the RF peak as evidence for the presence of a few percent water ice within the dark, cold interior of Shackleton crater.  The media quickly spread the startling news about water on our “bone-dry” Moon.

Shackleton, as seen in a joint 70 mm radar experiment collected by radio telescopes at Greenbank and Arecebo during a favorable libration opportunity in 2006.

Such a controversial conclusion did not go unchallenged.  Some in the radar community argued that abundant wavelength-sized rocks on the surface were the source of the enhanced same sense reflection.  Since the lunar surface is indeed rocky, this interpretation could not be ruled out.

Then a few years later, the Lunar Prospector (LP) mission found an enhancement of hydrogen concentration at both poles of the Moon; as hydrogen is a major constituent of water, the idea ice exists in the dark areas gained credence and has lead to a decade-long scientific search (using a variety of techniques) for lunar polar ice.  Though many areas near the poles were studied in detail, attention continued to be drawn back to Shackleton and the area near the south pole.

From studying Clementine images, we discovered that part of the rim crest of Shackleton is one of the most sunlit areas on the Moon.  Now we had a double-attraction: constant sunlight with water ice nearby.  At a press briefing in 1996, I called this area of water and sunlight “the most valuable piece of real estate in the Solar System.” Nothing found subsequently has changed my mind on that judgment.

So what have we learned about Shackleton lately?  Many different, new sensors have flown to the Moon in the last few years, including radar, ultraviolet (UV) imaging, laser reflections, and low-light level imaging.  And yet again, Shackleton crater continues to confound us with contradictory evidence, both for and against the presence of water ice in its interior.

In 2009, the question regarding the presence of water ice somewhere near the lunar south pole was answered when the LCROSS impactor threw up a cloud of water vapor and ice particles during its collision with the floor of the nearby crater Cabaeus.  Spectral mapping instruments on three different spacecraft (Chandrayaan-1, Cassini, and EPOXI) documented the presence of adsorbed water on the lunar surface, increasing in concentration with latitude toward both poles.  A small impact probe flown by India (MIP) passed through a water vapor zone in the exosphere just above the lunar south pole.  And radar images from Mini-RF, our radar imaging experiment on both Chandrayaan-1 and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), found evidence of high same sense reflections (just as Clementine had suggested in 1994) within the interior of Shackleton crater.

LRO Mini-RF instrument radar data indicate the walls of Shackleton crater may, indeed, hold ice, confirming exacting measurements of laser altimeter (LOLA) point brightness studies revealed in June. Actual observations (CPR) are compared to calculated radar values for 0.5% to 10% ice. Illustration to post "Mini-RF adds to evidence of ice on Shackleton walls," September 1, 2012 [NASA ].

These new lines of supporting evidence were countered by Japanese researchers, whose Kaguya spacecraft imaged the interior of the crater and found morphology similar to other lunar craters in the same size-class.  But no one had ever claimed that the interior of Shackleton was a skating rink of pure ice – the lunar polar ice is partly covered by waterless dust and mixed with an unknown amount of dry regolith.

Interpretation of the new data continues to vex us.  The LOLA (laser altimeter) team on LRO recently published a paper that documents the high reflectivity (at 1 micron wavelength) of the walls of Shackleton.  Although the team’s favored interpretation is that this is caused by a constant exposure of fresh material on a steep slope, they also note that it is consistent with the presence of water ice on the walls of the crater.

In addition, a team analyzing neutron spectrometer data from both LP and LRO found evidence in the fast neutron data (never before analyzed) that water in the interior of Shackleton is a possible explanation for its signal.  Detailed analysis of the Mini-RF data for Shackleton corrected for its steep wall slopes and found that the presence of 5-10 wt.% water there provides the best model fit to the observed data.  Newly obtained UV images from LRO show the existence of water frost in the interiors of the craters Haworth and Shackleton, and the neutron detector on LRO shows enhanced hydrogen within both Shoemaker and Shackleton craters.  The Japanese team from Kaguya continue to insist that the no-ice interpretation is the correct one.

So we are left with a mystery.  Some evidence is pro-ice and some is contra-ice.  I find it interesting that for most of the investigators, new data does not necessarily change any minds, but tends to be interpreted in a way most favorable to their previously published ideas.  This should not be terribly surprising; the people who have argued for some specific interpretation presumably did so for good reasons and desire hard and clear-cut evidence to the contrary before abandoning a previously held position, one no doubt reached after much thought and soul-searching.

Less so, but still-mysterious Shackleton, "twice as deep as the Grand Canyon," from "Tour of the Moon," a 2:30 video prepared by the Science Visualization Studio (SVS) at Goddard Space Flight Center in 2012 [NASA/GSFC/SVS].

The way to unravel the water-ice mystery is to go to the surface of the lunar south pole (or both poles) and measure the composition of the surfaces in question.  Getting a definitive answer about the nature of lunar water would be game changing.   Some say the bigger mystery is:  Why hasn’t the United States sent a rover to the south pole of the Moon to take a closer look?

Originally published April 8, 2013 at his Smithsonian Air & Space blog The Once and Future Moon, Dr. Spudis is a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author but are better informed than average.

Related Posts:
Mini-RF adds to evidence of ice on Shackleton walls (September 1, 2012)
Shackleton harbors ice after all (June 12, 2012)
1000 Day Anniversary of LROC Imaging (March 27, 2012)
Shackleton on a Summer's Day (March 26, 2012)
Shadowed fluffy lunar frost detected in starlight (January 14, 2012)
Shackleton: Out of the Shadows (September 17, 2009)

The Four Flavors of Lunar Water

From Lunar Pioneer

Earth over the watery north polar regions of the Moon, as viewed from NASA/DOD platform Clementine (1994) [USGS].

Paul D. Spudis
The Once and Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space Blogs

The Moon is constantly bombarded by the solid debris of the Solar System. Comets, asteroids and interplanetary dust, all containing varying amounts of water, have pounded the lunar surface for billions of years. Yet until recently, the Moon was considered to be barren and bone-dry. Rock and soil samples returned by the Apollo missions lacked any hydrous mineral phases or water-bearing weathering products. Since water is not stable on the Moon under ordinary conditions, what happens to it?

New studies of lunar samples, along with results from several missions in recent years, have given us a revolutionary new picture of water on the Moon. Study of volcanic glass from the Apollo 15 landing site in 2008 demonstrated that tiny amounts of water (about 50 parts per million) are present in the interiors of these glasses, suggesting that the lunar mantle (whence they came) contains about ten times this amount. This was a startling result, considering the extreme dryness of other lunar samples.

Because the Moon’s spin axis is nearly perpendicular (1.5° from vertical) to the ecliptic plane, the Sun is always on the horizon at the poles, keeping the floors of deep craters in permanent shadow. These dark areas only receive heat from the interior of the Moon and are extremely cold; recent measurements by the DIVINER instrument on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft indicate temperatures as cold as 25-35° C above absolute zero. Water molecules are trapped by the cold as soon as they find their way into these craters. Over the more than 4.5 billion years of lunar history, significant amounts of water could accumulate in many of these crater “cold traps” at the Moon’s poles.

"The Moon is on the critical path to human expansion into the Solar System."

The first hint of water ice in these polar cold traps came from a radio experiment aboard the 1994 Clementine mapping mission orbiting the Moon. The polarization characteristics of echoes from the south pole were consistent with the presence of ice in the crater Shackleton. Four years later, the Lunar Prospector (LP) spacecraft carried an instrument designed to measure the amount and energy of neutrons given off the Moon’s surface. Hydrogen absorbs neutrons, so when LP investigators saw a decrease in the flux of medium-energy neutrons near the lunar poles, they concluded that excess amounts of hydrogen were present there. Although this observation is consistent with the presence of polar ice, neutron data alone do not tell us what form the hydrogen is in, and it was alternatively postulated that this enhancement was caused by excess solar wind hydrogen.

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument on the 2008-09 Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission collected reflectance spectra for most of the Moon. It found both water (H2O) and hydroxyl (OH) molecules, present either as a monolayer on lunar dust grains or bound into the mineral structures in surface materials, poleward of about 65° latitude at both poles. Moreover, the abundance of this surface water varies with time, being present in greater quantity in both local early morning and late evening and it increases in abundance with increasing latitude. These results were verified by observations from the Cassini and EPOXI spacecraft during separate flybys of the Moon. The new observations indicate significant quantities of water moving towards areas with lower mean surface temperatures and increasing in abundance with latitude. Taken all together, the results mean that water is being deposited (e.g., by comet impact) and/or created (e.g., by reduction of metal oxides in the surface by solar wind protons) and then transported to the poles. By this process, significant quantities of water ice could accumulate at the poles over geological time.

Last October, the companion satellite to LRO, LCROSS, slammed the upper stage of its launch vehicle into the Moon’s south pole and observed the ejected material. Results show that both water vapor and ice particles were ejected from the LCROSS impact crater; initial analyses indicate that water is present at about the 5-10 wt.% level. The LCROSS impact site exhibits no anomalous radar behavior, suggesting that such an amount of water ice cannot be detected by radar. However, the results do indicate that significant amounts of lunar polar water may be present even in the absence of specific radar evidence for it. Spectra from this impact event show evidence for other volatile substances, including ammonia and simple carbon compounds. The presence of such material may indicate a cometary source for these volatile materials.

Both poles were covered by radar images from the Mini-SAR instrument on Chandrayaan-1. Much of the north polar region displays backscattering properties typical for the ordinary Moon, but one group of craters in the region show elevated polarization enhancements in their interiors, but not in deposits exterior to their rims. Almost all of these anomalous craters are in permanent sun shadow and correlate with proposed locations of ice modeled on the basis of the Lunar Prospector neutron data. These relations suggest that the interiors of these craters contain nearly pure water ice, with approximately 600 million metric tonnes of ice present in over 40 small craters within 10 degrees of the pole. The south polar region shows similar relations, except that it has fewer anomalous craters than the north pole. Small areas of polarization enhancement are found in some craters, notably Shoemaker, Haworth and Faustini; these areas might be deposits of water ice.

So water on the Moon is present in large quantity in at least four different “flavors.” Water was in the deep lunar interior 3.3 billion years ago, at concentration levels of a few hundred parts per million. This water would have been released during the eruption of lunar magma and could have made its way into the polar cold traps. Water is either being made or being deposited nearly continuously by impact all over the Moon. Most of this water is subsequently lost to space (e.g., by sputtering, ionization or thermal escape) but some is retained on the Moon. Any water arriving at a cold trap near the pole will be captured. Water, once in the polar areas, is stable as ice in the permanent darkness or where sublimation is prevented when buried by a thin layer of soil. Significant quantities of water may accumulate there; the LCROSS results suggest several to tens of weight percent water ice may exist in the polar soils. Finally, some of this migrating water apparently collects at rates high enough so that significant soil cannot mix with it during normal impact bombardment, as shown by the presence of relatively “pure” water ice deposits in selected lunar craters imaged by radar.

A significant amount of water at the poles of the Moon is present, with many billions of metric tonnes at each pole (detailed estimates of the water reserves are in progress). Such an amount is more than enough to support both permanent, sustainable human presence on the Moon and for export to cislunar space. Water is useful as rocket fuel and energy storage (hydrogen and oxygen are the two most powerful chemical propellants known) and for life support (water and oxygen) in space. These new discoveries fundamentally alter our understanding of the Moon’s processes and history and highlight both it’s scientific value and utilization potential. The Moon is on the critical path to human expansion into the Solar System.

Addendum. In Comments, below Dr. Spudis original post, Pradeep Mohandas reminded the author of the findings of the Moon Impact Probe, released from Chandrayaan-1, which discovered water vapor in very small concentrations in the space just above the Moon during its descent to the south pole. "This exospheric water (i.e., water in extremely small concentrations) may be related to the time-variable water seen in the spectral data from M3, Cassini, and EPOXI — in other words, it may represent water molecules in motion, migrating toward the poles. Work on the nature and processes of the lunar hydrosphere continues, and I will keep you up to date on the latest research results on this new and exciting subtopic of lunar science."

Moon's perfume comes from our Sun

Map of moderated neutrons over the whole Moon. Lunar Prospector data. [Elemental content from 0 to 500 keV neutrons: Lunar Prospector results, Genetay et al. / Planetary and Space Science 51 (2003) 271 – 280].

A lot has happened, suddenly it seems, since the $60 million Lunar Prospector mission first mapped fast and slow neutrons reflecting off the Moon in 1998. Five years after the small, optically blind spacecraft was deorbited into Shoemaker crater, in permanent darkness near the lunar South Pole in a forlorn last-minute attempt to accomplish what LCROSS eventually would do a decade later.

By late 2009, scientists around the world had put one and one and one together, beginning with the Russian-built neutron detector aboard Lunar Prospector in 1998, data originally thought erroneous that was detected during a sling-shot maneuver accelerating Cassini on its way to Saturn with more pieces of the puzzle collected by India's lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1. Among other things, sniffing the Moon has shown us the Moon is wet in more ways than one, wettest in its Permanently darkened Cold Spots and at the equator. It's becoming more and more clear that the dusty, radioactive lunar exosphere is a very dynamic place.

The STEREO solar satellites only very recently confirmed the presence of neutral hydrogen in the solar wind, so the driving force behind 99 percent of the Moon's most dynamic processes and its volatiles is none other than our modest yellow dwarf Home Star. The heavier elements patiently pile up perhaps mostly from bombardment by far more energetic cosmic rays.

Put more simply, Larry O'Hanlon of Discovery News has called our remote sensing a sniffing of the Moon's solar-driven perfume, in this case calling attention to yet another player in this drama and an experiment early on in the mission of Japan's lunar orbiter Kaguya, monitoring radio signals to and from it's two sub-satellites as they rose into line-of-sight up over the horizon in 2007 and 2008.

The moon's whiff of an atmosphere has been sniffed by a Japanese spacecraft under very special conditions and confirmed as coming largely from sunlight brutally hammering the lunar surface.

Using the very first direct measurements of the moon's "exosphere" as the moon passed through the streaming tail of Earth's protective magnetic field, researchers were able to watch the short-lived and ever-changing exosphere in the absence of the hot, magnetized solar wind.

What they found confirmed that it's really just powerful ultraviolet light knocking beat-up atoms, or ions, off the lunar surface and manufacturing the bulk of the weak lunar perfume.

This discovery is important for several reasons, explains NASA lunar scientist Menelaos Sarantos. One is that it could help interpret what kinds of minerals are on the moon's surface.

"What comes out [as exosphere] more or less tells you the mineralogy of the surface," Sarantos said.

The ions and how they change over time also provide direct evidence of how much of a beating the lunar surface is taking, which is invaluable information for anyone hoping to house humans on the moon in the future.

"If you want to build a lunar base or put humans on the surface for any time," Sarantos said, "you want a well-defined radiation environment."

Read the Discovery News feature HERE.

Moon's mini-magnetospheres are old news

Perhaps the third of the wide variety of lunar magnetic anomalies shown to be sufficient to form a density cavitation in the interplanetary magnetic field. The Moon's crustal magnetism is complex, with local intensities - some are characterized by obvious and relatively bright albedo features without corresponding topography -others without - and some antipodal to basins. Map from Japan's Kaguya (SELENE-1) data, released March 2008 [JAXA].

It was surprising to read reports over the weekend about a "discovery" of a mini-magnetosphere on the Moon, detected by the Sub-kev Atom Reflecting Analyser (SARA) instrument on-board India's Chandrayaan lunar orbiter, earlier this year.

It was particularly surprising when India's Economic Times quoted Dr. Amil Bhardwaj, principal investigator for that experiment, calling this ""first confirmation that prove that mini-magnetosphere can exist with such small magnetic field." (sic)

Something is clearly lost in translation. There is a world of difference between "discovery" and "first confirmation." A "discovery" of intense, local "lunar magnetic anomalies" by the Apollo sub-satellites has led to an interesting debate about their ages and their relationships with the Moon's many bright "swirl" phenomena on its surface, long linked with crustal magnetism.

The discovery of a mini-magnetosphere, a small crustal magnetic field intense enough to form a bowshock in the Sun's magnetic field, like Earth's, diverting the solar wind would come as a shock to Jasper Halekas and his colleagues at U.C. Berkeley who reported their observation of density cavity phenomena "over a strong lunar crustal anomaly in the solar wind" in data collected by the Lunar Prospector mission (1998-1999). They detailed their findings in the Journal of Planetary and Space Science in early 2008, observing traces of a local magnetosphere on the Moon in data collected both when the phenomena was under the Sun and when it was inside the Moon's wake, at night, as it traveled with the Moon through the Interplanetary Magnetic Field.

The translation in the Economic Times puts the "discovery" into the mouth of Dr. Bhardwaj, and "confirmation" into his direct quote. But there's still a need for a clarification, and that would not detract anything of the accomplishment of India's first lunar satellite which has other firsts and confirmations to its credit.

What may be more interesting is the hint given in the Economic Times that Dr. Bhardwaj tied the existence of a local "mini" magnetosphere in the Moon's upper crust to the prevalence of hydrogen, saying such phenomena may lead to re-estimates of how much hydrogen exists on the Moon's surface. Reading a translated news story is an excellent way to illustrate the importance of being careful not to jump to conclusions when reading first hand accounts written by those with a weak understanding of a topic.

Dr. Lon Hood, and a long list of scientists over the years, have puzzled over the Moon's lunar magnetic anomalies. Analysis of magnetometer and other Lunar Prospector data led to the discovery of magnetic fields over the diffuse bright surface feature over the Descartes Formation, immediately southeast of the landing site of Apollo 16, and helped identify a "mid-range" swirl with the magnetic field centered over nearby Airy crater. A magnetic field over Reiner Gamma, only seven degrees north of the equator, has long been observed, though each of these Near Side magnetic fields and the swirls are very different than the better known counterparts on the Far Side.

The famous swirl phenomena in southwestern Mare Ingenii is coincident with a strong crustal magnetism and is very obviously directly opposite from the Imbrium basin. A mini-magnetosphere is thought to exist near Gerasimovich, on the opposite side of the Moon from Crisium, and a wide-spread and complicated field of swirls can be found opposite Orientale, and so forth. It's important to note the existence of swirls with magnetic fields don't necessarily mean that local magnetism is intense enough to form a density cavity.

A mini-magnetosphere was proposed over Descartes in 2001, but the swirl pattern under the magnetic field centered on the northern rim of battered Descartes does not appear to be on the opposing side of the Moon from any basin-forming impact (yet).

Since evidence for a lunar "dynamic exosphere," perhaps even a "lunar hydrology, seems to be coming into focus, with Cassini and Chandrayaan observations of what appears to be neutral hydrogen in the solar wind bonding with oxygen in lunar rocks, forming water and hydroxyl, it will be interesting to see if the SARA team has found a solution to the mystery of how the swirl patterns under magnetic fields at Descartes, Mare Ingenii and Gerasimovich have managed avoid the darkening (optical maturity, or OMAT) that seems to be unavoidable over periods of more than 900 million years. A mini-magnetosphere might shield the surface underneath from the ceaseless bombardment of protons in the solar wind, but are not sufficient to shield those areas from higher energy cosmic rays and bombardment from micrometeorites.

Imbrium basin, opposite from Mare Ingenii (which is probably younger), is believed to be 3,800 million year old.

If they have tied this together with the formation of water molecules under the sun, it's likely to be tied together with dust transport. My colleague Larry Scott and I proposed one solution to the "longevity of low optical maturity" in 2008, setting out the notion that the submicron dust charging and levitation away from the Moon's surface believed to be part of the daily cycle on the Moon is prevented from falling back out onto the surface under these swirl-related crustal magnetic fields, keeping the area always presenting a bright, fresh face.

Whoever is properly credited with understanding the new "dynamic" Moon, it's an exciting time for the real scientists who've spent ten years interpreting the data returned by Lunar Prospector.

Each of the latest lunar orbiters since 2007, including NASA's LCROSS and the sole survivor, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), were directly inspired by the earlier mission In January 1999 the remarkably low-cost mission ended with with an impact in a permanently dark crater near the Moon's south pole later named for Eugene Shoemaker (1928-1997) whose ashes were on-board .

It must be a little confusing to the casual observer, however.

A short time before the LCROSS impact, as headlines incorrectly shouted about NASA's decision to "bomb the Moon," the agency held a press conference to announce the discovery of water on the Moon, thinly spread out under full daylight and closer to the equator, detected first by Cassini and confirmed by India's Chandrayaan-I.

Then, after long preparation, came the impact of LCROSS on October 9, but with no spectacular pictures immediately available showing the plume, headline writers dismissed the experiment as an expensive and meaningless "dud."

A month and three days after the impact the LCROSS team had accumulated enough evidence to announce preliminary findings. After years of hedging bets, trying hard neither to jump to conclusions or to risk disappointment, the LCROSS experiment appears to have demonstrated that at large part of the hydrogen Lunar Prospector detected in the Moon's polar regions must be bound with oxygen to form frozen water.

There are sound theories, but still no direct evidence, tying the trace water detected by Chandrayaan at lower latitudes with the chunky water collected in the very, very Cold Traps inside permanently darkened craters near the Moon's poles. But these two announcements, barely a month a apart, of the discovery of water on the Moon are phenomena separated by the distance between Bangalore and Mountain View.

The enigmatic swirls of Mare Ingenii, perpetually fresh under the magnetic field centered in the mountains closer to the horizon, a point directly opposite from the epoch-shattering, basin-forming impact that made Mare Imbrium. Lunar magnetic anomalies, crustal magnetism, is long associated with "low optical maturity," areas on directly on the Moon's surface that resist the darkening that marks newer, less space weathered materials from older, more battered craters. At least two mini-magnetospheres have been associated with the bright albedo at Descartes and the relatively intense magnetic field near Gerasimovich, opposite Mare Crisium. Not all surface magnetism, with associated swirls, appear to be sufficient to ward off solar wind [JAXA/NHK/SELENE].

Cassini and Chandrayaan agree

This graph compares detailed spectra from the moon taken by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) on Cassini spacecraft and NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (3M) on the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chandrayaan. The agreement between the two spacecraft is an excellent confirmation of the existence of water and hydroxyl (gray regions on the graph where wavelengths of infrared light range from 2.7 to 3.2 micrometers). The red dashed lines show thermal emission data which must be removed to better see the signature of water. The solid lines are the spectra after this thermal emission was removed. [NASA/ISRO/JPL-Caltech/USGS/Brown]

NASA instruments reveal water molecules in lunar surface

Minerally-bound water in the ejecta blanket of a fresh crater (less than 100 million years old) as detected in 1,000 gigabytes of data collected by NASA's 3M spectrograph as it flew aboard the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1. A simular image was built showing hydroxels that was not spread from the point of impact in all direction, as is the water-bearing materials, showing that the hydroxel-bearing minerals were likely to have been excavated from some depth.

"The moon continues to surprise us," said Dr. Carle Peiters, principle investigator for the American-made 3M experiment on-board India's Chandrayaan lunar orbier. "Widespread water has been detected on the surface of the Moon."

Instruments aboard three spacecraft reveal water molecules in amounts greater than predicted.
Hydroxyl (OH) - molecules consisting of one oxygen and one hydrogen atom was also was found in the lunar soil, in greater abundance. The findings were published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science.

NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or "M3," instrument reported the observations. M3 was carried into space on Oct. 22, 2008 aboard the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter. A more robust but very similar instrument, the Mini-RF mapper, is now operating on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).

Data from the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) on Cassini spacecraft and the High-Resolution Infrared Imaging Spectrometer on NASA's EPOXI (AKA "Deep Impact") contributed to confirmation of the findings.

"Water ice on the moon has been something of a holy grail for lunar scientists for a very long time," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

From lunar orbit M3's state-of-the-art spectrometer measured light reflecting off the moon's surface at IR wavelengths and revealed "a new level of detail in surface composition," according to NASA.

"When the M3 science team analyzed data from the instrument, they found the wavelengths of light being absorbed were consistent with the absorption patterns for water molecules and hydroxyl.

"For silicate bodies, such features are typically attributed to water and hydroxyl-bearing materials," said Carle Pieters, M3's principal investigator from Brown University. "When we say 'water on the moon,' we mean molecules of water and hydroxyl that interact with molecules of rock and dust specifically in the top couple of millimeters of the moon's surface. "

Whether this water is a result of solar wind interaction, out-gassing, cometary impacts, a combination of all of these and other lunar exospheric dynamics is not yet understood.

The M3 team found water molecules and hydroxyl at diverse areas of the sunlit region of the moon's surface, but the water signature appeared stronger at the moon's higher latitudes. Water molecules and hydroxyl previously were suspected in data from a Cassini flyby of the moon in 1999, but the findings were not published until now.

Roger Clark of the USGS, and a member also of the Cassini and 3M teams said the finding was not detected previously because removal of spurious detections of water is very much a part of the calibration process. Cassini was switched on during its fly-by of the Moon in November 1999 as calibration began and was immediately switched off until the vehicle approached Saturn. in 2004. Detection of a lunar water signature in the Cassini data was not apparent until 2008, after four years in Saturnian orbit.

"The data from Cassini's VIMS instrument and M3 closely agree," said Clark. "We see both water and hydroxyl." While the abundances and ratios are not precisely known, as much as 1,000 parts per million could be in the lunar soil. "To put that into perspective, if you harvested one ton of the top layer of the moon's surface, you could get as much as 32 ounces of water."

For additional confirmation, scientists turned to the "EPOXI" mission (AKA 'Deep Impact") and calibration data collected while it flew as close as 8 million kms from the moon in 2008 and June 2009 (on its way to a November 2010 encounter with comet Hartley 2).

That spacecraft confirmed the VIMS and M3 findings and expanded on them. "With our extended spectral range and views over the north pole, we were able to explore the distribution of both water and hydroxyl as a function of temperature, latitude, composition, and time of day," said Jessica Sunshine of the University of Maryland.

Sunshine is EPOXI's deputy principal investigator and also a scientist on the M3 team. "Our analysis unequivocally confirms the presence of these molecules on the moon's surface and reveals that the entire surface appears to be hydrated during at least some portion of the lunar day."

Because the EPOXI data in June 2008 were collected on two occassions, several days apart, Sunshine said, it was possible to see a stronger water signature at sunrise that dissipated at Noon and reaccumulated in the afternoon, before local sunset.

Meanwhile, ahead of the LCROSS impact on October 9, NASA is excited by the possibility of understanding lunar hydrology as a function of depth, as the impactor excavates as much as a meter deep into Cabeus A.

Confirming a damp Moon

The lunar surface as swept up by Cassini during its accelerating fly-by returning through the Earth-Moon system on the way to Saturn in 1999 showed regions of trace surface water (blue) and hydroxyl (orange and green) in daylight and at equatorial latitudes. [Science] On Aug. 19, 1999 the observations show water and hydroxyl at all latitudes on the surface, even areas exposed to direct sunlight. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) view was slightly south of the lunar equator. The yellow cross indicates a latitude and longitude of zero. The picture at top left shows infrared light reflected off the moon as seen by VIMS. The top right picture shows the moon as seen by Cassini's Imaging Science Sub-system (ISS) during the flyby. The image at bottom left shows temperatures of the moon derived from VIMS data. Temperatures near the equator are hotter than boiling water on Earth. The bottom center picture shows a VIMS map of water associated with minerals. At bottom right is a VIMS map of hydroxyl-bearing minerals, created by chemical reactions with minerals and glasses in the lunar soil. [NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS]

Kenneth Chang
New York Times

There appears to be, to the surprise of planetary scientists, water, water everywhere on the Moon, although how many drops future astronauts might be able to drink is not clear.

Data from three spacecraft indicate the widespread presence of water or hydroxyl, a molecule consisting of one hydrogen atom and one oxygen atom as opposed to the two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms that make up a water molecule. The discoveries are being published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science.

“It’s so startling because it’s so pervasive,” said Lawrence A. Taylor of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, a co-author of one of the papers that analyzed data from a National Aeronautics and Space Administration instrument aboard India’s Chandrayyan-1 satellite. “It’s like somebody painted the globe.”

For decades, the Moon has been regarded as a completely dry place. The dark side is more than ice cold, but when it passes into sunlight, any ice should have long ago been baked away. The possible exceptions are permanently shadowed craters near the Moon’s poles, and data announced this month by NASA verified the presence of hydrogen in those areas, which would most likely be in the form of water.

If water is somehow more widespread, that could make future settlement of the Moon easier, especially if significant water could be extracted just by heating the soil. Oxygen would also be a key component for breathable air for astronauts, and hydrogen and oxygen can also be used for rocket fuel or power generation.

Samples of lunar soil brought back from NASA’s Apollo missions about four decades ago actually did show signs of water, but most scientists working with the samples, including Dr. Taylor, dismissed the readings as contamination from humid Houston air that seeped in before the rocks were analyzed at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

“I was one of the ones back in the Apollo days that was firmly against lunar water,” Dr. Taylor said.

Now he is convinced he was wrong. “I’ve eaten my shorts,” he said.

The Chandrayyan-1 data looked at sunlight reflected off the Moon’s surface and found a dip at a wavelength where water and hydroxyl absorb infrared light. Dr. Taylor estimated the concentration at about one quart of water per cubic yard of lunar soil and rock.

Meanwhile, Roger N. Clark of the United States Geological Survey analyzed decade-old data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft when it passed the Moon en route to Saturn. He, too, found signs of water or hydroxyl, mostly at the poles, but also at lower latitudes.

Scientists working with the Deep Impact spacecraft, which later studied the Comet Tempel 1, also found infrared absorption at the water and hydroxyl wavelengths. More interesting, the amount of absorption — and thus the quantity of water — varied over time.

That suggests the water is being created when protons from the solar wind slam into the lunar surface. The collisions may free oxygen atoms in the minerals and allow them to recombine with protons and electrons to form water.

Lori M. Feaga, a research scientist at the University of Maryland who is a member of the team that analyzed the Deep Impact data, said this process would work only to about one millimeter into the lunar surface. If correct, that would not give future astronauts much to drink.

“You would have to scrape the area of a baseball field or a football field to get one quart of water,” she said.

Data from three spacecraft indicate that a thin film of water coats the surface of the soil in at least some spots, a discovery that raises the possibility of colonization.

John Johnson, Jr.
Los Angeles Times

Space scientists have found the strongest evidence yet that water exists on the moon, a discovery that helps complete a picture of a water-rich solar system and that could make colonizing our nearest neighbor in space much easier than previously thought.

Using data from three spacecraft that have made close flybys of the moon in recent years, research teams in the United States have found proof that a thin film of water coats the surface of the soil in at least some places on the moon.

"Within the context of lunar science, this is a major discovery," said Paul G. Lucey, a planetary scientist with the University of Hawaii, who was not involved in the current research. "There was zero accepted evidence that there was any water at the lunar surface, [but] now it is shown to be easily detectable, though by extremely sensitive methods. As a lunar scientist, when I read about this I was completely blown away."

The discovery "will forever change how we look at the moon," added Roger Clark, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver and the author of one of three papers -- each dealing with data from a different spacecraft -- appearing in this week's edition of Science magazine.

For decades, the moon had been considered a dead and uninteresting world by scientists. The Apollo missions of the 1960s and '70s brought back some rocks that contained tiny amounts of trapped water, but scientists at the time decided they had been contaminated by water from Earth.

Proponents of human space travel hope this new discovery could put pressure on the White House to follow through with the Bush administration's plans to return to the moon by 2020 and to construct Earth's first off-world colony there.

At the very least, the discovery lends weight to a new view of a friendlier solar system, where water, the lifeblood of biology on Earth, suddenly seems to be everywhere. Last year's Phoenix mission to Mars' polar region found ice just beneath its struts. Ice has been found on Saturn's moon Titan and it covers Jupiter's moon Europa.

Research teams from Brown University, the University of Maryland and the U.S. Geological Survey used spectroscopic measurements taken of the lunar surface by NASA's Cassini and Deep Impact spacecraft, as well as India's Chandrayaan 1 satellite. The instruments on all three spacecraft detected the signature of the OH chemical bond (oxygen and hydrogen) at many places on the lunar surface, including areas subject to daytime temperatures that reach the boiling point of water. The greatest concentrations were found in the coldest regions, however, near the two poles.

Detecting the OH bond is not a sure indicator of water. The instruments could be picking up hydroxyl, which is composed of one oxygen and one hydrogen atom. Water has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen.

But one of the papers, by research scientists Lori Feaga and Jessica Sunshine of the University of Maryland, found clear evidence for both hydroxyl and water in measurements taken by the Deep Impact spectrometer on June 2 and June 9. "We saw both species," Feaga said.

The amount of water in any one place is tiny. Clark estimated it at about a quart per ton of soil.

The moon "is almost as wet as a bone," Lucey said in an e-mail interview with The Times. "It is in the form of an imperceptible film on soil grains, perhaps several molecules thick."

Unless science makes some technological breakthrough, it would be extremely difficult for future moon colonists to harvest such tiny amounts of water. The research indicates, however, that the water migrates toward the poles -- by literally lifting off the soil particles and drifting north and south -- when the temperature rises during the lunar day. When the water molecules land in a colder area near the poles, they are trapped there in higher concentrations, "perhaps high enough to use," Lucey said.

The question of how much water might have accumulated at the poles could be answered on Oct. 9, when NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, known as LCROSS, is set to steer a rocket into a south pole crater called Cabeus A. The resulting collision, which will send up a dust cloud two miles above the surface of the moon, will be observed and sampled by satellites and observatories on Earth for evidence of water. Cabeus A was chosen because it is in a perpetual shadow, so any water stored there in the form of ice would not melt.

"The results of the present studies lend credence to the lunar polar water hypothesis by providing a proven source of water on the surface of the moon," Lucey said.

If there is water on the moon, where did it come from? One possibility, according to the research teams, is that the water was deposited by one or more comets colliding with the moon. Another is that meteorites colliding with the moon might have unearthed underground sources of water.

Finally, the solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing outward from the sun, which is mostly made up of hydrogen and helium, could play a role. The solar wind could supply hydrogen to bind with oxygen in lunar soils.

Perhaps ironically, given how many spacecraft have orbited and landed on the moon in the last five decades, two of the spacecraft that made this discovery had other missions besides observing the moon. Cassini's primary mission was to observe Saturn and its major moons, including the bizarre smog-choked Titan. The measurements of the moon were taken in 1999 as Cassini was on its way to Saturn.

Deep Impact shot a rocket into the comet Tempel 1 in 2005 to find out what a comet is made of, but has since been given other jobs, including rendezvousing with another comet. Chandrayaan 1, India's first moon-orbiting satellite, was launched in October 2008.

All three spacecraft carried spectrometers, which operate by breaking down the light reflected off the surface of the moon. Because every chemical molecule has a different light wavelength signature, scientists analyzing the spectrograph can tell what the surface is made of. The reason the Deep Impact instrument was able to see both water and hydroxyl, Feaga said, was because it has a larger bandwidth than the instruments carried by Cassini and Chandrayaan.

"It is astounding to find water at all latitudes on the moon and in places where the temperature is hotter than boiling water on Earth," Clark said.

The discovery comes at a pivotal time for America's space program. Former President George W. Bush set NASA on an ambitious course to return to the moon by 2020 and then travel on to Mars. But a presidential commission recently found that without a significant increase in its budget, NASA won't be able to reach either goal.

It's unclear how this new discovery will affect the debate in Washington over NASA's future, but the presence of water on the moon would presumably make colonization much easier. Water would not only be valuable for drinking, but it could also be used to make oxygen for breathing and to make rocket fuel for trips to and from Earth.

"Perhaps the most valuable result of these new observations is that they prompt a critical reexamination of the notion that the moon is dry," Lucey said. "It is not."

Significant water, everywhere on the Moon

Keith Cowing
SpaceRef.com

Three articles will appear in Science Magazine tomorrow - one paper each describing results on lunar observations from three spacecraft: Deep Impact aka EPOXI, Cassini, and Chandrayaan-1. Three different spacecraft - three different instruments - all saying the same thing about the presence of water and other materials on the Moon.

The EPOXI paper says that water has been "unequivocally" confirmed and that "the entire lunar surface is hydrated during at least some portions of the lunar day".

In another paper, previously unreleased 1999 flyby data from Cassini shows hydroxyl concentrations on "the sunlit face of the Moon". Water was detected in concentrations as high as "10 to 1,000 parts per million" and according to the paper "Regardless of its origin, water is found on the lunar surface in areas previously thought to have been depleted in volatiles."

The Chandrayaan-1 paper says "data suggests that the formation and retention of OH and H2O is an ongoing surficial process. OH/H2O production processes may feed polar cold traps and make the lunar regolith a candidate source of volatiles for human exploration."

Why has NASA waited, Cowling asks, HERE.

A Week in Space: Success Built on Failure

The Fountains of Enceladus

"Institutional memory is no luxury at NASA."

Joel Raupe

LUNAR PIONEER

The week in space saw demonstrations of astounding success, with stubbed toes and skinned knees here and there. Around Saturn, in low-Earth-orbit and here on the surface humans are building success on the shoulders of monumental failure.

Twentieth Century astronomer Harlow Shapley may have been wrong to disagree with Edmund Hubble’s theory that the Milky Way is yet another Galaxy, in a universe filled with similar “islands” in "the Great Debate" with Heber D. Curtis in 1920, but Shapley was prophetic in believing the quest for the stars would be a rugged one.

Planning for Failure:

At Langley Research Center NASA showed off an engineering mock up of an Orion engineering mock-up built to test launch failure escape systems. It evoked memories of similar Apollo mock-ups rolled out in 1961, even as Project Mercury was barely underway, and also memories also of Apollo 1 and the launch test Oxygen fire incinerating it's crew, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee in 1967.

"Institutional Memory isn't a luxury with NASA. Failure to remember is far too expensive.

Last month Thomas D. Jones remembered his friends aboard Columbia five years ago when he wrote in Popular Science that “Orion will launch with a powerful escape motor that can rocket its crew away from a disintegrating booster. A conical crew cabin structure will protect the heat shield beneath it from a debris strike like the one that doomed Columbia.”

Institutional Memory isn't a luxury with NASA. Failure to remember is far too expensive, as is contingency planning that would give a soccer mom a brain cramp. The costly fire on the pad killing the crew of Apollo 1, and the Apollo 204 Investigation Board, led by future Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman, and the discovering of 20,000 design flaws in the Apollo/Saturn vehicles, saved future success for Apollo and nine visits by 27 people to lunar realm.

Of course, the pad fire would not have been prevented by a capsule escape system, a contingency never used in American manned spaceflight, but it does show contingency planning works. It works where failure is anticipated. Critical faults that did end up failing in the future appear always to be ones not planned for in contingency policy, but deadly failure always brought harsh light to systemic and mechanical flaws in need of being contingency planning priorities.

Capsule escape systems were never used during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, but early NASA officials were informed by the spectacular booster explosions on the pad and just after lift-off of unmanned vehicles before and after, just as they're reminded today by more recent failure. Thomas D. Jones' article in POPSCI shows a return to expendable boosters and “capsules” won't mean that Constellation will be uninformed by the space shuttle and the lessons of both Challenger and Columbia, perhaps in finally giving design and mission critics a voice equal to those of accountants and vendors, and their friends in Congress.

Working the Problem:

In low-Earth-orbit, STS-123 and Endeavour docked with the International Space Station and joined Expedition 16 a few minutes later than planned, and by the end of our work week the first of five planned spacewalks during the shuttle's stay ended with attachment of the Japanese Kibo module and new dexterity added to the space station’s robotic Canadarm2 and crane with Dextre properly installed, at least where it should be.

Initial Power Couplings for the improvement didn't power-up, however, but costly failure was diverted in time when Primary Couplings were installed on the second spacewalk of STS-123, Saturday.

It's been a working weekend for NASA-Houston, and mostly according to plan for the ten people falling around Earth five miles a second, and 200 miles overhead.

On the first spacewalk, EVA record holder and ISS Expedition 16 commander Dr. Peggy Whitson reported her first look inside Kibo from the station showed "nothing unexpected." She was also happy to confirm no "floaters" inside the new station segment, now the first manned space vehicle built by Japan.

Expedition 16 flight engineer Dr. Garrett Reisman and STS-123 mission specialist Dr. Rick Linnehan completed the first spacewalk of the shuttle mission at 0919 UT, out in the void for seven hours and one minute.

Hiccups.

Far beyond the Moon, and just past conjunction, the soft yellowish star overhead before sidereal midnight testifies to the distance Cassini first had to travel even to begin its mission at Saturn.

It has been darting up and around and over and under the gaseous giant, using orbital mechanics of astounding complexities and Saturn and its many moon's gravity wells as third and fourth dimensional side pockets to fly out and away and quickly drawn back in again in precise maneuvering over and over again in an orbit around Saturn unlike any in nature.

Wednesday evening, in a much anticipated event Cassini was busy collecting data as it sliced just under the brightest moon in the solar system, over fresh snow on the south pole of Enceladus.

Slewing cameras as it moved by at 9 miles a second (14.4 kps); and only 32.3 miles above its surface, Cassini performed another unprecedented maneuver in a mission composed of unprecedented maneuvers to discover more about still another outer solar system discovery.

Almost everyone who read a newspaper on Earth knew the purpose. Ice geysers, shooting towers of wispy strands the fan directly away at distances far greater than Enceladus' width had been discovered where a heat signature was spotted in the Infrared spectrum earlier in the mission. Cassini, steered by controllers at JPL a billion miles away in Pasadena, was forced to zip directly through what apparently were the highest water fountains known to exist in our star system.

Enceladus has joined its Saturnian sister Titan, and Jupiter’s Io and Europa, as a member of the human "Hit Parade" of most intriguing moons.” It's large enough for its mass to have crushed itself into a sphere, but has a snow-blinding diameter roughly equal to the length of Interstate 95 in North Carolina.

As monumental a success as the maneuver turned out to be in adding another achievement to Pasadena’s long list of unsurpassed magic, as JPL waited for the data to download as it arrived in packets from 90 light minutes away as it was being scooped up by the Deep Space Network, and as Cassini continued a mad dash toward Titan, it became clear after a time that a “software hiccup” had spoiled a most important part of the show.

Planetary scientists won’t be disappointed with the pictures. They may even yet begin to answer the question of what forces are at play making Enceladus so “dynamic” and new in its south while so obviously ancient and quiet in its north. Those same scientists continue to puzzle over the awesome complexities of Saturn’s rings, and Enceladus with her high fountains of water ice somehow plays a role in that mystery.

Leading into the flyby Cassini shot side glances of those rings nearly edge on and caught now alomost routine shots of more than a few of the Ring’s Shepherd Moons, dancing to a melody we still can’t quite hear. Enceladus may be chief among them, particulary concerning its part in the cycling of Saturn's E-Ring.

But the very experiment onboard Cassini needing to be inside those tremendous Fountains of Enceladus became useless at the very moment it was most needed, though shuffling of software that had been rehearsed and rehearsed, and rehearsed again in the days beforehand. It was an anomaly suitable to a short story by Arthur C. Clarke.

JPL explained the "hiccup" this way:

"During Cassini's closest approach, two instruments were collecting data--the Cosmic Dust Analyzer and the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer. An unexplained software hiccup with Cassini's Cosmic Dust Analyzer instrument prevented it from collecting any data during closest approach, although the instrument did get data before and after the approach. During the flyby, the instrument was switching between two versions of software programs. The new version was designed to increase the ability to count particle hits by several hundred hits per second. The other four fields and particles instruments on the spacecraft, in addition to the ion and neutral mass spectrometer, did capture all of their data, which will complement the overall composition studies and elucidate the unique plume environment of Enceladus."And the raw imagery doesn't disappoint, with promising new information promising to be teased out in the days ahead.

Amazing Cassini, unscathed, roboticly unembarrassed, now speeds on toward Titan, continuing a long and amazing tour.

Cassini returns to Enceladus next October.

Europe’s Progress:

And then there’s the Jules Verne, ESA's new unmanned ATV space truck, which was inserted safely into a parking orbit after being lifted high and fast aloft from equatorial Kourou while perched atop a powerful Ariane 5.

During initial orbital checkout, in a “holding pattern” and with time to kill as controllers waits for Endeavour to depart for its turn at the Harmony Node at ISS, ESA ground controllers worked feverishly to restore 7 of 28 reaction control thrusters and one of three of the ATV’s main engines, failing to respond to command.

They were successful in restoring the fire (though ESA was confident the cargo vessel would safely make it to ISS regardless) and they can stop sweating, for the moment, ahead they can look forward to new ATV’s first semi-automated docking depending the hardcore-proven Russian-supplied and Ukrainian-built Kurs docking system.

Conclusion:

Noteworthy in all this are simple facts illustrating little problems are always essential parts of the stories of big successes, and big success seems highly dependant upon now-working systems that were once spectacular failures.

That Kurs docking system, an unquestioned success today and essential to the ISS and Russia's Progress, was a buggy and unholy mess, playing a role in breath-stealing human and mechanical error such as more than one complete miss, near miss and at least one catastrophic accident in the days of the Soviet MIR space station program only eleven years ago.

And Jules Verne was successfully propelled to its present station-keeping orbit by the once- equally disastrous Ariane 5, which exploded nine miles up and rained debris on the French Guyana and Brazilian coast over an area of many miles twelve years ago.

Remembered clearly that day the cry of a Kourou facility launch director, when it happened, who reported with tears, “it is all over, it is all finished.”

Clearly, it was not.

And then the beginning of this present NewSpace Race, even throughout the world, might well be marked by the hellish disintegration of Columbia over Texas on February 1, 2003., though some would mark it with Ronald Reagan's determination to open the sky to entrepreneurship the previous decade. It was Columbia that refocused public attention, and without political will, Lincoln believed, nothing is possible.

Far from ending manned and unmanned space exploration, renewed Vision starts with documented mechanical and systemic failure. Failure may not be "an option," but it is a proven element essential to success.