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].

Understanding the Reactivity of Lunar Dust for Future Lunar Missions

Lunar Dust Rims - Glassy rims produced by vapor/sputter deposition - tell a history of cosmic ray bombardment and Solar Wind, explaining optical maturity... "also contain approximately 10 nm Fe nanoparticles (nanophase iron)." [Sarah Noble, NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center]

W.T. Wallace
Wyle Labs., Inc.
A.S. Jeevarajan
NASA Johnson Space Center
L.A. Taylor
University of Tennessee - Knoxville

Lunar regolith is highly activated by grinding. Reactivity is dependent upon sample maturity (and locale). Maturity is measured by the amount of nanophase iron (np-Fe) in a sample, relative to the total iron oxide (FeO). Lunar regolith activity is a direct function of the amount of np-Fe present. Reactive samples are "deactivated" quickly after exposure to humid air on Earth.

- NASA Human Research Program Investigators' Workshop
February 2010

Mineral Mapping the Moon

Early mineral map derived from the different spectral, signatures measured by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (3M) on board the Indian Space Research Organisation's Chandrayaan, before India's first lunar orbiter failed last month. The green, purple and blue areas are covered with iron-rich lava flows, similar to those of Hawai'i. The red and pink regions contain the mineral plagioclase, among the minerals found in granite on Earth. Measurements of iron (Fe) on the Moon is an important marker of the likely presence of the important compounds with which it is known to bond on the Moon, like titanium, and oxygen. From similar mineralogical maps derived from remote sensing from Clementine (1994) the presense of Helium-3, a possible fuel for advanced, clean nuclear fusion on Earth beyond 2050. [ISRO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Brown]

Synthesis and Stability of Iron Nanoparticles for Lunar Environment Studies

mong the hairiest problems facing the inevitable "extended human activity on the Moon" often discussed and underscored mightily in the Almighty "Scientific Context for the Exploration of the Moon" (NRC, 2007), is lunar dust. The six brief tours of the lunar surface by crews from the United States, forty years ago, definitely proved to be dusty.

However, not in the way some expected.

Neil Armstrong repelled away from the lunar module Eagle very carefully, on the first small step, playing out the slack glancing over both shoulders. It was a great relief to many serious geologists and to Armstrong when he, Aldrin and Eagle didn't suddenly sink into a loose pack of dust, perhaps many meters deep.

Those who believed the Moon's dusty surface was sufficiently packed down by micro-meteorites, etc., and additionally held together by a wide variety of chemical valences and gravity won out., though the same process of "gardening" eventually re-works the outer skin of the Moon every 2 million years, and has is patient.

Shards of rock are clipped off larger microscopic fragments and are so light, they've proven highly susceptible to charging in UV sunlight. In turn, this charge carries with it dust as it is repelled in every direction by the whole Moon's velocity through the interplanetary magnetic field, Earth's magnetic field and crustal magnetic anomalies locally embedded on the Moon with some strong enough to form their own pause in the relentless Solar Wind.

In short, a great volume of lunar dust levitates.

Not one vacuum bottle meant to remain sealed with it's lunar sample intact in a "native" environment managed to make it back to Earth intact, though the jostling of the handling of the samples by human and robotic methods before re-entry, and the forces of re-entry themselves are given most of the blaim, maintaining the integrity of things like flexible seals will prove more than a little important if human are to survive on the Moon or Mars for very long.

Coming up with a simulant has not been easy, and still eludes efforts to manufacture enough to be truly useful. Beyond that have been efforts to add microscopic divots by as would be created by random micro-meteorites and the little scars caused by the plasma flash of atomic nucleon of iron, cosmic rays of elemental metal traveling at or very near the Speed of Light.

The result is the hardest aspect of lunar dust to duplicate, a tattoo of "nanophase iron," the presense of which irritates many scientists (literally) and delights others, who see in it ubiquity on the Moon a resource with a potential not yet dreamed of.

Ching-cheh Hung and Jeremiah McNatt at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland have been studying how to add the distinctive flavor of nanophase iron to lunar dust "simulant," fast enough to be of use.

Simulant of lunar dust is needed when researching the lunar environment. However, unlike the true lunar dust, today’s simulants do not contain nanophase iron. Two different processes have been developed to fabricate nanophase iron to be used as part of the lunar dust simulant:

(1) Sequentially treating a mixture of ferric chloride, fluorinated carbon, and soda lime glass beads at about 300 °C in nitrogen, at room temperature in air, and then at 1050 °C in nitrogen. The product includes glass beads that are grey in color, can be attracted by a magnet, and contain α-iron nanoparticles (which seem to slowly lose their lattice structure in ambient air during a period of 12 months). This product may have some similarity to the lunar glassy regolith that contains FeO.

(2) Heating a mixture of carbon black and a lunar simulant (a mixed metal oxide that includes iron oxide) at 1050 °C in nitrogen. This process simulates lunar dust reaction to the carbon in a micrometeorite at the time of impact. The product contains a chemically modified simulant that can be attracted by a magnet and has a surface layer whose iron concentration increased during the reaction. The iron was found to be α-iron and Fe3O4 nanoparticles, which appear to grow after the fabrication process, but stabilizes after 6 months of ambient air storage.

Introduction: Understanding the physics, chemistry, and toxicity of the lunar dust in the lunar environment is essential for lunar exploration. In order to do research on lunar dust, a few simulants that mimic the lunar dust obtained during the Apollo missions were produced. Although it is noted that the Apollo lunar dust contains chemically reactive iron nanoparticles, none of the current simulants do (Ref. 1). The goal of this research is to produce iron nanoparticles that can be used as a component of lunar dust simulants. Additional efforts were made to investigate the stability of the iron nanoparticles thus produced over a period of several months...

Read the Brief Study HERE.