Scientists Find Direct Evidence of Ice On the Moon (qz.com) 16
According to a new study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have found the first direct evidence of frozen water on the Moon's poles. "The discovery is based on data gathered by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a NASA instrument that flew to the Moon back in 2008," reports Quartz. From the report: Reanalyzing this data today, the researchers found tiny patches of ice mixed with rock on the surface of certain craters at the northernmost and southernmost points on the Moon. Shuai Li, a geologist at the University of Hawaii who worked on the study, says the data can't tell us where the ice originally came from. However, Li adds, it's likely that it came from comets that smashed into the Moon years ago. Collisions with other space objects, like meteorites and comets, gave the Moon its pockmarked surface, and could have easily brought a foreign substance like ice along with them. Ice on the lunar surface could also be a result of gases coming out of the rock below. It could also be due to solar winds -- energetically charged ions emanating from the sun -- bombarding the Moon's surface to cause the chemical reactions needed to make frozen water. However, to truly understand the ice's origins, Li hopes to get a rover onto the Moon to take actual samples of the frigid lunar ground and its ice.
Oh, RIGHT! (Score:5, Informative)
Ice on the lunar surface ... could also be due to solar winds -- energetically charged ions emanating from the sun -- bombarding the Moon's surface to cause the chemical reactions needed to make frozen water.
Oh, RIGHT!
Rocks are generally metallic oxides. Solar winds are mostly high-energy protons - hydrogen nuclei. Hit a rock molecule with one, hang a hydrogen off one of the oxygen nuclei, turning it into a hydroxyl group. Hit the hydroxyl again and you knock off. It grabs that or another nearby proton and now you've got a water molecule in a near-moon orbit that intresects its surface.
A lot of 'em are pointed away - and have more than escape velocity. Bye-bye. Others bounce away (at more than escape velocity) before they get slowed down by one or more collisions with surface features (to below escape velocity). But some end up losing enough momentum to hang around and eventually condense out on a cryogenically-cold shadowed side of a rock or crater wall. Frost!
One of those things that are obvious in hindsight.
Re:Oh, RIGHT! (Score:5, Insightful)
Aren't they always?
ICE on the moon (Score:4, Funny)
ICE on the moon...
Better make sure your papers are in order before heading off to the moon!
Another reason for moon first ? (Score:2)
I don't get the obsession with mars when the moon has so much more to promote it.
Re:Another reason for moon first ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe because the Moon is a Harsh Mistress?
Re: (Score:3)
Because Mars is sort of livable, more interesting. (Score:5, Interesting)
You could actually walk outside on Mars with just an oxygen bottle and very light suit - at times a high of 68F on the equator at noon.
The air is super thin but still better than nothing; the water that is there more plentiful, the gravity far more than the moon where you would atrophy to a far greater degree than on Mars (Mars is 38% of Earth gravity, the Moon is just 17% or more than half of Mars gravity).
We'll see manned bases on Mars long before the Moon... if we ever see manned Moon bases.
Re: (Score:3)
You can do that on the moon as well
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Pressure suits are overkill and no the air isn't better than nothing on mars unless you enjoy being sandblasted in high winds
And as to first a Hohmann transfer orbit available only every two years and takes months to get to mars. As opposed to three days for the moon.
Re: (Score:2)
Among those things is a shallow gravity well, which makes it ideal for both constructing and launching deep space vehicles.
They're far too big and expensive when launched from Earth. And construction in microgravity is painfully slow and arduous.
Consider the moon landings. It took the Saturn V to get there. But only a couple of small rocket engines (one on the lander, one on the command module) to bring them all the way back.
Granted, they didn't bring everything b
This just in. . . (Score:2)
. . . .Antifa are protesting the presence of ICE on the Moon. . . .