Moon Not Only Has Water, but Lots of It

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Wall Street Journal

OCTOBER 21, 2010, 3:36 P.M. ET.
Moon Not Only Has Water, but Lots of It

By GAUTAM NAIK

Scientists have discovered significant amounts of water on the moon—about twice the quantity seen in the Sahara Desert—a finding that may bolster the case for establishing a manned base on the lunar surface.

In an audacious experiment last year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration slammed a spent-fuel rocket into a lunar crater at 5,600 miles an hour, and then used a pair of orbiting satellites to analyze the debris thrown off by the impact. They discovered that the crater contained water in the form of ice, plus a host of other resources, including hydrogen, ammonia, methane, mercury, sodium and silver.

NASA announced its groundbreaking discovery of lunar water last October. Now, a more detailed analysis of the data—the subject of six research papers being published Friday in the journal Science—concludes that there is a lot more water on the moon than anyone expected.

"It's really wet," said Anthony Colaprete, co-author of one of the Science papers and a space scientist at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. He and his colleagues estimate that 5.6% of the total mass of the targeted lunar crater's soil consists of water ice. In other words, 2,200 pounds of moon dirt would yield a dozen gallons of water.



Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303339504575566194097878552.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Moon's surface may hold enough water for a manned base

Moon's surface may hold enough water for a manned base
Analysis of debris thrown up when a rocket was crashed into a crater on the moon suggests about 5.6% of the material there was frozen water
Ian Sample, science correspondent guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 21 October 2010 19.00 BST

There are large quantities of frozen water in some regions of the moon, according to a study of debris kicked up by a rocket that crashed into its surface last year.

Last autumn, Nasa scientists steered the upper stage of an Atlas V rocket travelling at 5,600 miles per hour into a deep crater as part of the US space agency's hunt for signs of water on the moon. The impact was recorded by a spacecraft flying behind the rocket, called the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), and by cameras on Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter as it circled the moon.

In a series of papers published in the journal Science, Nasa researchers describe how the crash punched a crater in the moon between 25m and 30m wide and created a plume of debris more than half a mile high. Sensors aboard LCROSS detected about 155kg of ice in a single "snapshot" following the impact. In one of the papers, a team led by Anthony Colaprete at Nasa's Ames Research Centre in California estimated that frozen water accounted for about 5.6% of the material in the crater.

"What we found was, I would say, an oasis in an otherwise desert on the moon that has highly concentrated water with respect to the moon, and a lot of other materials," Colaprete said.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/oct/21/moon-surface-water-manned-base

[formercia]

2. Mercury?

Not in the water, I hope....

[dchill]

20. What?...

Just like home!

[slackmaster]

35. Just don't eat the moon fish

:crazy:

[Javaman]

42. Mmmm moon fish stix...

Would all pies made on the moon be moon pies?

[Octafish]

3. Was wondering when Rupert would fix his eyes on the moon.

"Silver, too?"

[XanaDUer]

17. Great minds, Octa, great minds

:hi:

[saigon68]

53. fix eyes on the moon.

[AC_Mem]

4. Gee, I wonder

if China is going to try to grab the Moon's elements...

Anything can happen in this upside down world.

[demi moore]

5. now..

we send a payload of solar panels and inflatable domes..and remote control robots.... right?

[RandomThoughts]

6. I always laugh at that.

There are people that think they remote control someone, although I don't believe in that concept, think of it this way.

If you think you are sending some message to someone, maybe the person you think you send to, actually sent the message to you first, and you linked into it.

LOL

It is such a silly concept. Although I don't believe in those doctrines anyways.

[demi moore]

16. well i mean

robots that we can drive around from earth and use to construct a runway and prepare the site for a colony.
we send them to mars so i don't see why not.

rich people will pay mega bucks for holidays there and could make the whole venture profitable. china i believe has similar plans.
not to mention there is enough clean energy up there to fuel the planet for 1000 years.. so i hear

[hyphenate]

40. Nope

Now we send Ed Straker and the Moongirls up there, and Moonbase Alpha, and we can't forget the Moonraker while we're at it, and overpopulate the moon like we have planet Earth!

[Posteritatis]

7. Now I'm flashing back to the ridiculous threads here about that probe.. (nt)

[Blue_Tires]

21. That probe was trying to find the sex-starved Amazon Women...

[DavidDvorkin]

22. I support more money for space exploration, but especially for that part of it.

[Posteritatis]

23. My personal favorite was someone worried about the ramifications of "bombing the moon at night." nt

[awoke_in_2003]

32. You wouldn't want the light to go out...

would ya? :rofl:

[awoke_in_2003]

31. Ah, the glory days...

of "don't bomb the moon" :)

[JVS]

52. don't rape the moon.

[snooper2]

44. I'm flashing back to DU'ers who don't think we ever landed on the moon

:rofl:

[Posteritatis]

49. It's hard to flash back to a constant, no?

The people who were worried that we were bombing the moon at night instead of during the day when it was safe to, though... wow.

[Occulus]

45. Those were just epic

Two words:

Omega minimo.
:rofl:

[JVS]

51. See how awesome blowing up the moon turned out to be!

:headbang: USA USA USA :headbang:

[AngryAmish]

8. Well I guess we have to get back to bombing the fucker

bomb. the. monn.

[greiner3]

9. 'Space, the final frontier;'

I want to go. Too bad my children are probably too old now to be able to go either. However, I'm rooting for my grandchildren the opportunity to fly to other worlds. It may be the only chance to save any of humanity. I wonder what kind of religion will sprout up among the emigrants?

[aquart]

12. We have to go. We're that sort.

It never could be me. And I always marvel at the ones it can be. I am so grateful to them.

[kimmerspixelated]

24. It's really pretty great in an oddly beautiful way.

I like green too much to want to go. I think men are more inclined to make a big leap in their lives like that than women, don't you think? I've never met a man that said he would turn down a free trip into outer space.

[aquart]

26. I had a geology professor who wanted to go.

To My Excellent Professor With A Pulmonary Embolism

Me too. I want to go to Mars with you.

(You have to live for that.) I'll need some things:

The current fare, a list of what to pack

And what to wear (You've got to live or you

Can't go), a fool to feed my cats...You said,

To see the ancient beds of Martian streams,

All, even if they knew there's no way back,

Geologists would go. (You can't go dead.)

Will Mars take travellers checks? I have to know.

(Breathe even if it hurts--a good life clings.)

Can we build castles in the Martian dunes?

Go mad from double-pulling Martian moons?

You made me want to know what you don't know.

(Don't dare die now and strand me in your dreams.)
To My Excellent Professor With A Pulmonary Embolism

Me too. I want to go to Mars with you.

(You have to live for that.) I'll need some things:

The current fare, a list of what to pack

And what to wear (You've got to live or you

Can't go), a fool to feed my cats...You said,

To see the ancient beds of Martian streams,

All, even if they knew there's no way back,

Geologists would go. (You can't go dead.)

Will Mars take travellers checks? I have to know.

(Breathe even if it hurts--a good life clings.)

Can we build castles in the Martian dunes?

Go mad from double-pulling Martian moons?

You made me want to know what you don't know.

(Don't dare die now and strand me in your dreams.)

[proteus_lives]

39. We will.

Humans migrate, they throw themselves into the sea and the plains.

We're explorers and have to answer the great questions by flinging ourselves in into the great unknown.

[Arkana]

10. You know what you must do, Sarah Palin.

[Blue_Tires]

27. Palin hasn't evolved enough yet -- The Monolith won't have any effect on her...

[KansDem]

11. Now, if we could only find the "scotch crater"...

...I'd volunteer to be the next "moon walker" :9

[nc4bo]

15. And then your name shall be "Johnny".

Ya know, Johnny Walker?

Sorry - corny.

[KansDem]

18. LOL!

And if I spend too much time at the craters, I'd become the first "moon stumbler. " ;)

[Haole Girl]

13. I always thought it did

Not sure why, but I did.

[drm604]

14. Ammonia and methane can be used to make fertilizer, right?

If I'm correct about that then a base might be able to be at least partly self sufficient.

[formercia]

30. Any people would make plenty of both.

farts and pee.

[drm604]

33. Sure but you'd need a closed cycle with 0% loss,

which isn't possible.

[formercia]

41. The way we fucked up Planet Earth proves that point.

It might be easier just to ship fertilizer in, rather than the processing equipment for extracting them.

[Downwinder]

19. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

[valerief]

25. Let's frack it with toxins. It's the American way. nt

[NickB79]

48. Toxins are only toxins if there's something there to poison

Since the Moon is lifeless, we could plate it in plutonium and lead for all the Moon cares.

[grahamhgreen]

28. Isn't that about the same percentage of water as cheese?

[MilesColtrane]

29. That's just the Moon Mother crying because we bombed her.

(tip 'o the hat to a funny ex-DUer)

[struggle4progress]

34. Setting up a moon base would be a pointless waste of resources

[Thor_MN]

37. Only if your viewpoint is limited to what's under your feet.

If your horizons extend to space, the moon a source of resources that sits in a much smaller gravity well. Compared to materials lifted from earth, materials lited from the moon are very cheap.

[struggle4progress]

38. I'm excited by space science but robotics is orders of magnitude cheaper than manned

because life support is bulky and heavy. And, of course, that's the only point of a moon base: it's for manned missions elsewhere; that's the point of looking for water there. But one could get quite a lot more information on the planets by robot, for the same price, then one could get from manned missions

[Vehl]

36. This is great news!

I've been closely following these developments after the discovery/confirmation of the existence of water on moon by the Chandrayaan orbiter.

The only way we humans can hope to stave off extinction (I mean those caused by rouge asteroids and such)is to expand/migrate out of our home planet. After all...its silly to put all our eggs in one basket. The best option that guarantees survival would be a galactic colonization that spans at least our own galaxy, that way we also escape extinction in case a star goes nova on/near our solar system. the gamma ray bursts from such supernovae can wipe out all life within a radius of dozens of light years.

[myrna minx]

43. I wonder which corporation is going to claim the water rights? n/t

[Gold Metal Flake]

46. Woo hoo! CONCRETE!!

That means LUNAR FREEWAYS! What would be the 0-100mph time of a Veyron at 1/6th the gravity of Earth? LET'S FIND OUT!!

LUNAR FREEWAYS!! FUCK YEAH!!!

[Uncle Joe]

47. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Judi Lynn.

[Turborama]

50. I wonder if Trump is drafting up blueprints for a hotel already?

Branson is already working on the transport...

[KurtNYC]

54. Perfect for making Tang !

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