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NASA Moon

NASA To Announce New Science Results About Moon (nasa.gov) 59

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
NASA will announce an exciting new discovery about the Moon from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) at a media teleconference at 12 p.m. EDT Monday, Oct. 26. Audio of the teleconference will stream live on the agency's website. From a press release: This new discovery contributes to NASA's efforts to learn about the Moon in support of deep space exploration. Under NASA's Artemis program, the agency will send the first woman and next man to the lunar surface in 2024 to prepare for our next giant leap -- human exploration of Mars as early as the 2030s. Understanding the science of the Moon also helps piece together the broader history of the inner solar system.
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NASA To Announce New Science Results About Moon More

NASA To Announce New Science Results About Moon

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  • TMA1 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kmahan ( 80459 ) on Friday October 23, 2020 @01:54PM (#60640978)

    They found a Monolith?

  • "to the lunar surface in 2024". I would love to see that happen, but I just won't believe it until it happens.
    • It's actually not a promise, it's a threat. They are sending astronauts to the moon regardless of the budget. Without additional funding they just won't be able to bring them back.
  • It's not made out of cheese like we initially hoped?

  • Helium-3 presence will be confirmed (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Their spectrometers showed evidence of large concentrations of HE3 in the upper crust.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skids ( 119237 )

      I was hoping for a large lava bubble conveniently next to one of those polar ice patches.

  • Lots Water??? (Score:3)

    by SwashbucklingCowboy ( 727629 ) on Friday October 23, 2020 @02:53PM (#60641240)

    So they can put people on the moon and not have to ship water there? Could also be used for radiation shielding.

    • Most likely. Below is what one presenter, Casey Honniball, has been working on from her online bio. Another presenter works for NASA's airborne observatory.
      So, they probably detected water in some rocks. Not sure how easily extractable it might be.

      1/2020 - Present:

      NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow
      Universities Space Research Association, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

      Water contents of lunar pyroclastic deposits is under debate due to differences between remote sensing data and Apollo sample measu

    • So they can put people on the moon and not have to ship water there?

      This seems to be an automatic assumption - that building a mining extraction infrastructure on the Moon is certain to be cheaper than shipping it from Earth.

      One thing holding back building lunar colonies is the launch cost (though not actually the major one - which is the cost of the human habitation itself). But to the extent that launching gets cheaper, making putting machines and buildings on the Moon cheaper, it also makes the cost of shipping water cheaper.

      Currently the costs of putting a "freighter" c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tragedy ( 27079 )

      So they can put people on the moon and not have to ship water there? Could also be used for radiation shielding.

      They already found water. It's in tiny quantities relative to the moon as a whole, but massive quantities compared to the short term needs of any lunar missions.

  • The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth (Score:3, Funny)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Friday October 23, 2020 @02:56PM (#60641254) Homepage

    It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)

    Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.

    Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!

    Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.

  • Fuck this "announcment" BS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zynder ( 2773551 ) on Friday October 23, 2020 @03:27PM (#60641372)
    I'm tired of this "announcement" bullshit! Fucking say what you're gonna say or GTFO. Trump started this crap and now everyone is doing it. This isn't the new season of a shitty TV show. You don't need to hype every goddamned thing for weeks to increase your ratings. I don't need to tune in this Friday to see what happens. Damned near every time you see some group doing this, it ends up being a big fat nothing. If it were ACTUALLY important, they'd be rushing to get the story out fast before someone else does. Reality TV has ruined everything. I'm sick of it.
    • The Cryptocurrency universe took this to a whole new level by making an announcement for the date on which they will announce an event. There are too many MBAs and marketing gurus "generating hype" out there.
    • Much as it pains me to defend President Trump, I must point out that NASA has been doing this since before 2016 - most notably in September of 2015 when they announced and upcoming statement about Mars (it was expected to be something about life, but disappointingly turned out to about evidence for flowing liquid water in Mars's past).

    • Announcements are as old as the press. A company or institution would write an announcement as a heads-up to the press, so they could send journalists to cover the event. The announcement would not be published.

      At some point, websites with no constraints on the number of articles they publish started publishing the announcement instead of waiting for the actual event.

    • Trump started this crap

      No, he did not. This crap started long time ago.

    • "Fucking say what you're gonna say or GTFO."

      They are going to say what they're gonna say. However, it helps if there are other people there to hear it. If they announce to an empty room that's not really any better.

      "they'd be rushing to get the story out fast "

      Perhaps they are treating this as science rather than a tabloid news show in it only for the ratings.

  • Whales?

  • The moon is flat too

  • SOFIA is infrared based, so maybe we can expect something related to warmth. Something like a residual volcanic activity.

  • Water. Lots of it. Maybe. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pz ( 113803 ) on Friday October 23, 2020 @04:19PM (#60641520) Journal

    If you look at the people who are listed on the press report, there are some mucky-mucks and a post-doc. That means they're talking about the post-doc's work.

    And, if you chase down the post-doc's research interests, you find the following tidbit:

    Investigation of water at pyroclastic deposits on the Earth and Moon using new data sets and techniques

    which matches pretty well with their two most recent publications:

    Sargeant, H., V. Bickel, C. Honniball, et al. 2020. "Using Boulder Tracks as a Tool to Understand the Bearing Capacity of Permanently Shadowed Regions of the Moon." Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets 2019JE006157 [10.1029/2019je006157]

    Bickel, V. T., C. I. Honniball, S. N. Martinez, et al. 2019. "Analysis of Lunar Boulder Tracks: Implications for Trafficability of Pyroclastic Deposits." Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets 2018JE005876 [10.1029/2018je005876]

    So, my guess is that they've found lots of water by looking at the way boulders roll on the Moon.

    But it's a guess!

    • Exactly right. Take a look at this accepted proposal for using SOFIA -- this is almost certainly the project that has generated this press release.

      Proposal ID: 08_0132

      Principal Investigator: Paul Lucey

      Title: Water abundance on the Moon from 6 micron observations

      Abstract: Spacecraft observations of the Moon showed a hydrogen-bearing species caused an unexpected 3 μm absorption. However, existing data at 3 μm cannot resolve the chemical form of this hydrogen, whether molecular water (H2

  • And we don't even know about what they got up to on Apollo 19.

  • They just found out Its on a Descending Orbit and will crash into the earth in 50 years.

  • Wonder what will it be. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by John Cavendish ( 6659408 ) on Friday October 23, 2020 @04:55PM (#60641622)

    SOFIA is an infrared telescope, so I wonder what they have discovered on the close side of the Moon with it - some residual internal heat or some unexpected molecules?

  • Just like the earth, the moon is flat (not a sphere).
  • So obviously it's emitting deadly radiation, houses hibernating aliens, or is about to crash into us. Yay.
  • In the last couple of decades, NASA has earned a reputation for pre-announcing exciting discoveries which, when actually revealed, where nice scientific finds, but nothing earth-shattering. You can cry wolf only so many times before people stop taking you seriously. Please, come through this time around.

  • They periodically do these, and it's literally never aliens. I recall only twice when NASA did a press conference and said "aliens" and both times were fake (mars meteorite alh84001 in 1996) and (arsenic based DNA, 2010).

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