NASA Estimates 600 Million Metric Tons of Water Ice At Moon's North Pole 271
After analyzing data from a radar device aboard last year's Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission to the Moon, NASA scientists have found what they estimate to be 600 million metric tons of water ice in craters around the Moon's north pole.
"Numerous craters near the poles of the Moon have interiors that are in permanent sun shadow. These areas are very cold and water ice is stable there essentially indefinitely. Fresh craters show high degrees of surface roughness (high circular polarization ratio) both inside and outside the crater rim, caused by sharp rocks and block fields that are distributed over the entire crater area. However, Mini-SAR has found craters near the north pole that have high CPR inside, but not outside their rims. This relation suggests that the high CPR is not caused by roughness, but by some material that is restricted within the interiors of these craters. We interpret this relation as consistent with water ice present in these craters. The ice must be relatively pure and at least a couple of meters thick to give this signature."
That should roughly equal (Score:5, Informative)
1,267,327,975,003 pints of beer.
It's ice, you clod! (Score:5, Informative)
Solids need to be measured in Volkswagen beetles.
Re:Units! (Score:2, Informative)
1000L = 1 Metric Ton(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_liters_of_water_is_in_one_ton_of_water)
2,500,000L = 1 Olympic Swiming Pool(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_water_does_an_Olympic_sized_swimming_pool_hold)
My math might be off, but that puts 600,000,000 Metric Tons of water at 240,000 Olympic swimming pools worth =D
Re:That should roughly equal (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Units! (Score:2, Informative)
1 metron ton = 1000 kilograms
Liters which translates, for water, to roughly the same to kg.
According to Wiki, an olympic pool as a minimum volume of 2,500 m3 (88,000 cu ft) or 2,500,000 L (550,000 imp gal; 660,000 US gal) which would be filled with 2500 tons of water.
hence, you could fill up 2400 olympic pools (6 000 000 / 2500 ).
If you take into account the atmospheric pressure, weight of ice and perfect ratio between the water - kilos conversion that number might variate a bit.
Daily Show covered this. (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-1-2010/neil-degrasse-tyson
Re:That's great, but.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:When was all this figured out? (Score:4, Informative)
I guess it would have been after 1972, because I'd like to think that NASA would have sent some Apollo astronauts to collect some ice samples while they still had the chance. Or was it always known, theoretically, and for whatever reason they decided it could wait, as everyone assumed that if Apollo 21 didn't get around to it, Apollo 86 would.
Sigh. I really miss those days.
At least RTFS!
"After analyzing data from a radar device aboard last year's Indian Chandrayaan-1"
Chandrayaan-1 only went up a year and a half ago, so yes, this was figured out after 1972.
Re:Earth (Score:3, Informative)
"Where did you get that ring???" sob - slap slap
To that you're supposed to answer "I went to Jared", or at least that's what the TV says will make her and her closest friends happy.
Re:Habitable Moon (Score:4, Informative)
Re:water ice (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Forgive the skepticism (Score:5, Informative)
Obama cancels the plans to return to the moon and about a month later vast quantities of water are suddenly discovered on the moon.
You seem to have a common misconception: NASA only cancelled Constellation, which was a horribly overbudget and behind schedule program designed to build two new rockets which wouldn't have been able to take people to the Moon until sometime in the late 2030s. The newly announced program boosts NASA's budget, and places an emphasis on lowering the cost of spaceflight to LEO and building the technologies needed for sustainable beyond-Earth exploration.
In situ resource utilization (e.g. lunar ice extraction) is one of the new technologies emphasized in the new plans. The old Constellation plans largely defunded this kind of research, as the funds were needed to help prevent the rocket building from getting further behind schedule. The new plans call for a near-term in-space resource extraction demonstrator:
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/428356main_Exploration.pdf [nasa.gov]
Flagship Technology Demonstrations
Projects selected as in-space, flagship demonstrations will be significant in scale, and offer high potential to demonstrate new capability and reduce the cost of future exploration missions. These missions will demonstrate such critical technologies as in-orbit propellant transfer and storage, inflatable modules, automated/autonomous rendezvous and docking, closed-loop life support systems, and other next generation capabilities key to sustainably exploring deep space.
In FY 2011, NASA will initiate several Flagship Technology Demonstrators, each with an expected lifecycle cost in the $400 million to $1 billion range, over a lifetime of five years or less, with the first flying no later than 2014. In pursuit of these goals, international, commercial, and other government agency partners will be actively pursued as integrated team members where appropriate. ...
In FY 2011, NASA will initiate demonstration projects in the areas of in situ resource utilization (ISRU), autonomous precision landing and hazard avoidance, and advanced in-space propulsion, leading to demonstrations on either robotic precursor or flagship missions.
In Situ Resource Utilization: NASA will fund research in a variety of ISRU activities aimed at using lunar, asteroidal, and Martian materials to produce oxygen and extract water from ice reservoirs. A flight experiment to demonstrate lunar resource prospecting, characterization, and extraction will be considered for testing on a future Flagship Technology Demonstration or robotic precursor exploration mission. Concepts to produce fuel, oxygen, and water from the Martian atmosphere and from subsurface ice will also be explored.
NASA's plans also call for propellant depots in low-Earth orbit, and likely EML-1, a Lagrange point which allows relatively easy access to the Moon, Near-Earth Asteroids, and Mars. Once lunar ice extraction is demonstrated and an EML-1 propellant depot is established, a natural progression is to have automated processing plants on the Moon produce H2 and O2 fuel from lunar ice, which can then get shipped up to the EML-1 depot making access to the inner solar system much easier. The old plan suppressed this sort of research in favor of in-house rocket-building, while the new plan enables sustainable space exploration.
Re:sublimation (Score:3, Informative)
Can someone tell me why the ice doesn't just turn to gas and vent to space?
It's really, really cold [nytimes.com] in these craters -- they're actually some of the coldest spots in the solar system, at -400F (-240 degrees celsius or a little higher than 30 Kelvin). Ice can remain there for billions of years without sublimation. Heck, you could probably store liquid nitrogen in these craters.