Chandrayaan M3 Instrument Confirms Iron-Bearing Minerals On the Moon

William Robinson writes with news that the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), an instrument developed by NASA and sent aboard India's Chandrayaan-1, has confirmed the presence of iron-bearing minerals on the moon. This marks the beginning of an extensive examination of the composition of the lunar surface. "Isro officials said M3 would help in characterising and mapping lunar minerals to ultimately understand the moon's early geological evolution. 'The compositional map that will come out of M3 will have fantastic data on geological formation of the moon,' the official said. Researchers said the relative abundance of magnesium and iron in lunar rocks could help confirm whether the moon was covered by a molten, magma ocean early on in its history. Iron and magnesium will also indicate melting of the moon, if it happened and how it formed later. This metallic element has been found in lunar meteorites, but scientists know little about its distribution in the lunar crust."

Re:WTF?????

[ianare]

Yeah I didn't get the big deal about it either, until I read this :

"Obviously many missions before have found iron, but Chandrayaan-1 has reiterated the presence. We believe it is very significant because the mission has already fulfilled one of its objectives, which was to sight minerals."

... Ok so now what was the big deal again ?

Re:outsourced?

[ph3r]

Jokes tend to be funnier when they're true.

Re:WTF?????

[AikonMGB]

All of the manned missions to the Moon took place in a relatively small area on the near-side. As far as I can tell from the press spiel in the link, M3's mission is to survey the entire surface of the Moon.

At present there is very little data of any sort regarding the far-side of the Moon. Information on the magnetic and gravitational fields is of particular interest because of its importance for orbital prediction, determination, and manipulation.

Aikon-

This is not news!

[Geoffrey.landis]

India's Chandrayaan-1, has confirmed the presence of iron-bearing minerals on the moon.>/p?

The presence of iron bearing minerals on the moon is not news.

At best, I suppose it might be news that at least one of Chandrayaan-1's instruments is functional, but "we've found iron on the moon" (Iron being, I believe, the third most common element in lunar rock, after silicon) is not even a difficult test of the instruments-- mapping phosphorus, or one of the trace elemental components, would be more interesting.

Re:WTF?????

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok so now what was the big deal again

The full blown mineralogy mapping of moon was never undertaken before, which is being done now. And the first step is to confirm the correct working of instruments before the full mapping is to be believed.

Re:outsourced?

[Anonymous Coward]

What crap. Nobody "outsourced" this particular space trip to India.

Surprised that you are not modded up

[WindBourne]

If I were Britain, or even the rest of EU, I would skip the part of working on habitats.Britain was talking of extending ISS with a module. Instead, they should buy the modules from Bigelow and focus on various robotics. In particular, I would work on some that can work on the outside of the ISS (floating around; help astronauts), and others that will work the moon/mars. The reason is that those same robots used on moon/mars can be used on Earth. That is also why America should be focusing on that.

As to cargo hauling, rockets ARE rocket SCIENCE. There is still art, but not like 50 years ago. Now, would be a good time for govs to get out of the task of cargo hauling and encourage the private enterprise to take over.

OK, it works

[DynaSoar]

Once again, "confirm" is to be taken as "finds the thing we already knew was there", rather than the implied "found, and the data verified". More than 700 kg of lunar material has been returned by Apollo and Luna. We have a very good understanding of the content. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock [wikipedia.org]

The actual main point of TFA is that the NASA device detects what it should if it were working properly, and so should, barring other problems, be able to map the surface in terms of mineral content. If and when it does, that will be news. Saying "it's not broke so far" isn't very newsworthy.

In the absence of substantive discoveries of its own (which I have no doubt will occur; there's much to learn and the Indian team is quite capable), ISRO tends to sound like the little brother tagging along with the big kids, chattering on about how he's a big kid now too, despite just being there as opposed to actually having done big kid stuff (TFA *is* about a NASA device, after all). In the mean time, the big kids might find it annoying, but you're not doing it for them, so get excited, wave that flag, and have a ball. Heck, I remember Houston breaking into cheers just because Apollo 8 fired its motor for trans-lunar insertion, a far cry from actually making it.

Patience guys, if you don't have a significant primary discovery all your own in 90 days (for the data; confirmatory analysis may take a while longer), either you're not trying or it broke.