Lunar Weather: many miles wide, 2 mm deep

Chart highlighting the calibration observations by Deep Impact of the northern polar regions of the moon on June 9. At left is a reference albedo map from Clementine while the other images are different representations of Deep Impact data, including measurements of brightness, temperature, and the strength of a signature for water and hydroxyl. The water signature varies significantly across the lunar surface but, while the strength of the water signature is not correlated with any terrain type it is highly dependent on temperature. Since successfully carrying out a spectacular impact experiment on comet Tempel 1 July 4, 2005, Deep Impact spacecraft has been on an extended mission, called "EPOXI," which will culminate in a flyby of comet Hartley 2 on November 4 2010. The spacecraft observed the moon for calibration purposes on several occasions en route to its second cometary encounter. [NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Maryland]

Short-range 'lunar hydrology'

Observations from NASA's Deep Impact mission of the moon's north pole June 2 and 9, 2009 revealed changes in the amounts of water and hydroxyl. In the week between these datasets, the moon rotated 90 degrees. A volcanic mare terrain (labeled 'M') is observed in the morning on June 2 and at local noon by June 9 and a highland unit ('H') begins at noon and rotates to evening by June 9. Deep Impact observed a significant change in the strength of a water and hydroxyl signature as the moon rotated around. The highland unit has a weaker signal near noon (red) and a stronger signal by evening (blue). Taken together the data show a "systematic" change in water loss from morning to noon, recovery in the afternoon and return to "steady state" by evening. This daytime cycle suggests that hydrogen ions in the solar wind may be a source for re-hydration. [NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Maryland]

The Solar Wind Theory illustrated

Schematic shows daylight cycle of hydration, loss and re-hydration on the lunar surface, as indicated by calibration images collected by EPOXI during as close as 8 million km encounters with the Moon in 2007 and again, on two separate days in June 2008. In the morning, when the moon is cold, it contains water and hydroxyl molecules. The Solar Wind Theory holds the water and hydroxyl are, in part, formed from hydrogen ions in Solar Wind. By local noon, when the moon is at its hotest, some water and hydroxyl are lost. By evening, the surface has cooled again, and is returning to a state equal to that seen in morning.

Regardless of location or terrain type the entire surface of the moon is hydrated during some part of the lunar day. [University of Maryland/McREL. ]

What's different about this 'discovery' of water on the Moon?

Joel Raupe
LP

First, a distinction should be made between the water we hope to liberate with LCROSS and the water making news today.

The water we hope to expose using using kinetic energy supplied by the Moon's gravity together with the mass of the two-ton LCROSS and its gathered momentum during October 9's terminal descent into Cabeus A has probably been accumulating for a very, very long time. The hydrogen detected using Russian-built neutron spectrography aboard Lunar Prospector (1998) and confirmed by LRO this past summer is confined to the polar regions. As discovered by Prospector and now confirmed by LRO, this hydrogen signature is not confined to the permanently darkened regions. It is at its most "chunky" in those cold spots, shadowed regions and micro-shadows, however

It also now appears likely that the lasting water near the poles of the Moon has some of its origin in the process decyphered nearer the equator. The hydroxels and water frost detected throughout the lunar surface and making the news today may in part be a by-product of the solar wind.

As recently as June 2008, neutral hydrogen was unexpectedly detected in the solar wind. It was unexpected because, at its most basic the Sun is "a mass of incandescant gas" where "hydrogen is turned into helium at a temperture of millions of degrees."

The detection of hydrogen in the steady solar wind, previously thought to be composed mostly of helium speaks to the unexpected inefficiency of the Sun but some of this hydrogen is in the mix of particles that steadily bombard the lunar surface with the solar wind, cosmic rays and micrometeorites that constantly "garden" that surface, and some of this hydrogen apparently combines with oxygen when liberated in this mix from the compounds that make up the Moon.

In the form of water and hydroxel molecules, these volatiles linger in the predawn and quickly dissipate at sunrise. Though most is then lost to the vacuum of space some of these molecules end up bounced to the "cold traps" of the permanently darkened regions, craters and micro-shadows of the lunar poles.

At least some of the water LCROSS was designed to uncover arrived on the Moon in the form of comets and cometary fragments and may have been been accumulating in the super-cold and permanently darkenen regions, craters and in micro-shadows that increase in number above 70 degrees latitude toward the lunar poles for a very long time. Some of it was covered up and buried, protecting it from sun and space and not exclusive to the polar regions.

Even as close to the equator as Mare Crisium, where the last lunar sampling mission in 1976, Lunar 24, cored into the mare-material to a depth. In those samples, to put it very simply, the Soviets found "holes" in the compounds that may have once been filled by hydroxels and H2O. Another extrapolation of their analysis seemed to indicate this phenomena increased with depth.

The water on the Moon they are talking about in Houston right now is likely to be a transitory phenomena, but as a by-product of the same processes that create and dissipate these molecules is probably an explanation for the more long-lasting hydrogen and water that manages to bounce into the permanent dark, both large and small, nearer the poles.

The next time you look at a Full Moon, remember there's water being "created" and destroyed there all the time, and it's been going on for 4.575 billion years. There may be a juicy moon up there, and in more places than we ever dreamed during the Apollo Era.

The why and where of water on the Moon

Arlin P.S. Crotts
Department of Astronomy, Columbia University
Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory,
Informal to the Lunar-L Group

I am not sure why so few investigators have paid attention to these results, but if you would like to see an analysis of the situation regarding lunar water that takes these and the rest of the evidence into fair consideration, please refer to my paper (originally submitted June 2007, resubmitted September 2, 2009)

"Lunar Outgassing, Transient Phenomena & the Return to the Moon II: Predictions and Tests for Outgassing/Regolith Interactions," Crotts & Hummels (2009), Astrophysical Journal, submitted http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0909.3832

If you look at the current evidence, it indicates that the water content is higher at greater depths, and may not be fundamentally a surface effect. (Please refer to the Akhmanova et al. 1978 paper: "Water in the regolith of Mare Crisium Luna-24," Akhmanova, Dement'yev & Markov (1978) Geokhimiya, 2, 285).

IR diffuse reflection and IR transmission studies of lunar soil samples obtained by Luna-24 are described. Approximately 0.1 wt% water was detected in samples from a depth of 143 cm, and the amount of water seemed to increase with depth, although the extent of change was almost at the limit of technique sensitivity. The possibility of sample contamination by water is considered.

Water was not detected in samples obtained during earlier moon missions when a similar procedure was applied, but in the earlier studies the lower limit of detection was approximately 0.2 wt% water. The significance of the detection of water for theories of lunar development is indicated.

There are a number of ways to approach this problem, and I have papers coming out based on further data, but I will not tip my hand about these at this time.

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.

Shadow on the Moon

NASA's Picture of the Day, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009. Surveyor 1, the first American soft landing on the Moon, after a near-perfect direct-to-landing 44 hour-long trans lunar coast and its landing on the near side, leading edge of the Moon in it's orbit; (316.8° east, 2.5° south) in Oceanus Procellarum, coming to rest 65 km northeast of Flamsteed within the Flamsteed P 'ghost crater' ring. This image of Surveyor 1's shadow show it's mast and solar panels cast against the lunar surface in the late lunar afternoon. Surveyor 1 was launched on May 30, 1966, and landed on June 2, 1966. The flight proved the Hughes Aircraft design and landing technique and returned more than 11,000 slow-scan color television images. The first of the Surveyors recorded information on the bearing strength of the lunar surface, its radar reflectivity and temperatures. Still sitting precisely where it came to rest 43 years ago, the 4.3 meter-wide, 3 meter-high Surveyor weighed 330 kilograms, with an additional 537 kg of propellant at launch. Arriving at a relative 2,600 meters per second speed, one retrorocket fired until reaching 97 kilometers over the surface, followed by the firing of three vernier (variable throttle) descent engines that cut-off when Surveyor's three legs reached 5 meters altitude. Surviving more than one two-week long lunar night, Surveyor 1 stayed in contact with JPL until the following October and was last, briefly reactivated in January 1967. [NASA/JPL]

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.

Lotus-inspired dust shielding

The lotus plant has inspired materials engineers to create a coating that mimics the plant's unusual self-cleaning capabilities. Goddard engineer Wanda Peters is investigating whether materials treated with these coatings could survive the harsh space environment. Credit: Flickr Creative Commons / Liangjinjian

Lotus-inspired dust-shield

Bill Steigerwald and Lori Keesey
PhysOrg.com

A NASA team is developing a transparent coating that mimics the self-cleaning properties of the lotus plant to prevent dirt from sticking to the surfaces of spaceflight gear and bacteria from growing inside astronaut living quarters.

Read the Article HERE.

Strong hints of lunar H2O stirs excitement

This Mini-RF image from NASA's powerful Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows radar imagery of the lunar south pole, a potential reservoir for hidden water ice, in new images released Sept. 17, 2009. [NASA/APL/LPSI]

Leonard David
Space.com

Earth's aged, crater-pocked and seemingly bone-dry moon may well sport a wet look.

That outlook is gaining momentum via a wealth of new scientific measurements gleaned by an international armada of moon-orbiting scientific scouts, including a report last week that craters near the lunar poles, always in shadow, may harbor water ice.

Such a prospect could fuel those eager to send human explorers back to the moon, to establish a base camp there, and to hone talent and hardware for jumping off to other destinations.

Locating, mining and processing polar deposits of water ice on the moon, it is reasoned, would add up to a useful resource for future lunar inhabitants.

The idea of ice in the floors of sunlight-shy polar lunar craters was first aired in 1961 by Caltech researchers Kenneth Watson, Bruce Murray and Harrison Brown. In the late 1970s, James Arnold of the University of California, San Diego, suggested that comets and water-rich asteroids crashing into the moon could deposit water to the lunar surface.

Still, is the chatter about new lines of evidence supportive of water ice at the lunar poles a slam-dunk situation?

"If ice is found we have to further explore it with landers, rovers, coring drills to assess its distribution and composition," explained Bernard Foing, project scientist for the European Space Agency's now-defunct SMART-1 lunar orbiter. Foing is also the director of the International Lunar Exploration Working Group.

After such an assessment is made, the next task would be to figure out how ice could be partly exploited on the spot in some areas to ease the next steps of human exploration toward an international lunar base, Foing said.

Read the Article HERE.

Boeing throws hat in with Bigelow

Robert Block
The Write Stuff
Orlando Sentinel

Undaunted by Congressional skeptics of commercial space ventures, aerospace heavyweight Boeing Co. submitted a proposal Tuesday to NASA requesting the agency to speed up development of commercial human spaceflight capabilities.

The company said in a press release that the company has joined a total of four teams of commercial space ventures vying for a share of $50 million of Recovery Act funds given to NASA to develop technologies and processes so that commercial rocket companies can begin transporting astronauts to orbit.

The money is essentially for a study contract that will be awarded to a number of companies to develop subsystems and technologies for commercial crew transport, said Boeing spokesman Ed Memi.

Boeing already has a capsule design that it has proposed to NASA before.

According to the press release, one of the projects has Boeing joining forces with Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace, which has created self-expanding space modules that can be used as labs or hotels in orbit. The plan would be to design a system that could take crew and cargo to Bigelow’s facilities or even the international space station, Memi said in an email.

Read the Write Stuff post, HERE.

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

Chandrayaan-1 3M team: Abundant lunar H2O

NASA will hold a media briefing at 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Sept. 24, to discuss data from the moon collected by the twin to the Mini-RF radar mapper on board India's Chandrayaan-1.

NASA Television will provide live coverage of the briefing from NASA Headquarters, in Washington. Participants include:

* Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington
* Carle Pieters (pictured), principal investigator, Moon Mineralogy Mapper, Brown University
* Rob Green, project instrument scientist, Moon Mineralogy Mapper, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
* Roger Clark, team member, Cassini spacecraft Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer and co-investigator, Moon Mineralogy Mapper, U.S. Geological Survey in Denver
* Jessica Sunshine, deputy principal investigator for NASA’s Deep Impact extended mission and co-investigator for Moon Mineralogy Mapper, Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland.

NASA

Francis S. Frank Johnson, 91

Apollo physicist and UT Dallas Pioneer

Joe Simnacher
Dallas Morning News

Francis S. "Frank" Johnson helped launch the University of Texas at Dallas and later saw his atmospheric experiments land on the moon.

He was the first scientist hired at the school before it became a university, and he served as the fledgling institution's interim president.

Dr. Johnson, 91, died Thursday at Medical City Dallas Hospital of complications of a stroke.

Dr. Johnson, the first to recognize that the outermost part of the Earth's atmosphere is enveloped in hydrogen, devised an ultra-sensitive gas detector that Apollo astronauts took to the moon.

Days before the first astronauts landed on the moon in 1969, Dr. Johnson was named interim president of what was about to become UTD. He held that post until 1971. Dr. Johnson played a key role in building the university.

Obit HERE.

Ares I-X launch moved up to Oct. 27

NASA's first version of the rocket slated to replace the space shuttle and send astronauts back to the moon will make its debut test launch Oct. 27, four days early, the space agency announced Tuesday.

The rocket, a demonstration booster called Ares I-X, was previously scheduled to blast off Oct. 31, but engineers preparing the booster were able to complete work in time for the earlier liftoff, NASA officials said. Launch is set for 8:00 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT) on Tuesday, Oct. 27 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Space.com

LRO NAC Commissioning Sequence

Several LROC NAC sequences were acquired looking across the illuminated limb to quantify scattered light. Not only were these excellent engineering test images but they also presented spectacular oblique views across the lunar surface [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Mark Robinson
LROC News System

Last week the LRO spacecraft lowered its orbit into the 50-km mapping orbit after three months in an elliptical (30 km by 200 km) commissioning orbit. Many engineering tests were performed with the spacecraft and all the instruments during the busy commissioning phase of the mission. The LROC test images were of deep space, stars, nighttime Moon, and vertical views of the lunar surface. Occasionally some extreme oblique views were shuttered as a result of specific test criteria.

The limb images in this release were part of an image quality test.

Read the Full Release, HERE.

Foster and Partners bid for lunar construction

This is Money.uk

It is one of the world's most distinguished architecture firms, the design brains behind London's Gherkin, Millennium Bridge and Wembley Stadium.

But Foster and Partners has been hit hard by the global slump in construction on Earth and is hoping for better luck on the Moon.

It is part of a group hoping to win a contract from the European Space Agency to test materials for building settlements on the lunar surface.

The mission, to develop a 'more permanent presence on the Moon', is part of the Aurora space program.

Foster and Partners, founded by Lord Foster 40 years ago, is now backed by private equity firm 3i and has been having a tough time of late.

It posted an £18m loss in its latest accounts and axed 300 of its now 1,000-strong work force after building work dried up. So the lunar project will be a key contract.

Experts at Building magazine say Foster's consortium has a good chance of winning, partly due to the expertise of the team which includes Alta SpA, a space technology specialist.

ESA invited bids from firms willing to progress research initiated by the Apollo astronauts in the late Sixties.

The project is to adapt materials found in space to be used for building. Earth materials cannot be used because of the huge transport costs.

A spokesman for Foster declined to comment.

Russia's Selenokhod chases GXP

Team Selenokhod, a Russian group of engineers and managers, announced its official entry into the Google Lunar X Prize competition Monday. The $30 million competition challenges space professionals and engineers from across the globe to build and launch a privately funded spacecraft to the moon which is capable of completing a series of exploration and transmission tasks as outlined in the competition's official rules. Team Selenokhod, headquartered in Moscow, Russia with ten group members, is among 20 teams from 44 countries that are competing for their share of the $30 million prize.

"The contribution progress of (the) private sector in cosmonautics is (a) worldwide trend nowadays. The previous international contest, (the) Ansari X Prize, showed that non-government companies have (opportunities) to create space technologies needed to achieve ambitious goals. Team Selenokhod wants Russian companies to evaluate the experience of their foreign colleagues, to understand (the) big opportunities of private space exploration and join us in our challenging project", said Nikolay Dzis-Voynarovskiy, Selenokhod Team Leader.

Story from Aero-News, HERE.

LROC: Milichius A (Mare Insularum)

The inner rim of Milichius A crater in Mare Insularum from the Narrow Angle Camera aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Top Image does not do this Copernican Age (> 100 million years) crater justice, and the inset is taken from the full-sized representation showing the bolders thrust upward with the relatively recent impact. [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Samuel Lawrence
LROC News System

Milichius A is a Copernican-aged crater found in the middle of Mare Insularum (upper left). There are many different sizes of impact craters in this view, from 9 km in diameter (Milichius A) all the way down to craters that are just a few meters across. The "cracked" appearance of the rim exterior is a result of impact melt flowing after emplacement, and is fairly common in other similarly-sized, relatively young Copernican-aged craters. You can also see that while there are numerous smaller craters on the surrounding ejecta blanket, the interior of the crater seemingly has far fewer craters than the exterior. Does this mean that there have been no impacts on the inner wall of Milichius A? Probably not - there have almost certainly been many small impacts on the steep surface. Instead, the streaks that you see on the crater walls are places where materials have simply slumped into the crater, covering and obscuring the smaller craters as it slides down the walls of the crater, although some of the darker, low-albedo streaks may actually be impact melt flows.

Uncalibrated LROC NAC data; north is up; image width is 6 km. Browse the whole NAC Image. (From NAC Archive - Featured Image Sept. 20, 2009)