NASA Confirms Water Molecules On Moon (npr.org) 28
NASA has confirmed the presence of water on the moon's sunlit surface, a breakthrough that suggests the chemical compound that is vital to life on Earth could be distributed across more parts of the lunar surface than the ice that has previously been found in dark and cold areas. From a report: "We don't know yet if we can use it as a resource," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said, but he added that learning more about the water is crucial to U.S. plans to explore the moon. The discovery comes from the space agency's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA -- a modified Boeing 747 that can take its large telescope high into Earth's atmosphere, at altitudes up to 45,000 feet. Those heights allow researchers to peer at objects in space with hardly any visual disruptions from water vapor. The water molecules are in Clavius crater, a large crater in the moon's southern hemisphere. To detect the molecules, SOFIA used a special infrared camera that can discern between water's specific wavelength of 6.1 microns and that of its close chemical relative hydroxyl, or OH. "Data from this location reveal water in concentrations of 100 to 412 parts per million -- roughly equivalent to a 12-ounce bottle of water -- trapped in a cubic meter of soil spread across the lunar surface," NASA said in a release about the discovery.
"This is not puddles of water but instead water molecules that are so spread apart that they do not form ice or liquid water," said Casey Honniball, the lead author of a study about the discovery. The data confirm what experts have suspected, that water might exist on the moon's sunny side. But in recent years, researchers had been able to document only water ice at the moon's poles and other darker and colder areas. Experts will now try to figure out exactly how the water came to form and why it persists. NASA scientists published their findings in the latest issue of Nature Astronomy.
"This is not puddles of water but instead water molecules that are so spread apart that they do not form ice or liquid water," said Casey Honniball, the lead author of a study about the discovery. The data confirm what experts have suspected, that water might exist on the moon's sunny side. But in recent years, researchers had been able to document only water ice at the moon's poles and other darker and colder areas. Experts will now try to figure out exactly how the water came to form and why it persists. NASA scientists published their findings in the latest issue of Nature Astronomy.
Water molecules found on the moon (Score:5, Funny)
Nestlé was reportedly interested in funding the next moon landing.
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"Nestlé was reportedly interested"
The water molecules come from Armstrong's piss bottle, nonetheless it's "produced and bottled on the Moon".
water might exist on the moon's sunny side (Score:3)
Which are ALL the sides.
A Dark Side of The Moon is a record album by Pink Floyd.
Re: water might exist on the moon's sunny side (Score:1)
Re: water might exist on the moon's sunny side (Score:1)
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But only one side at a time, and it sounds like they're specifically detecting water vapor sublimating from the sun-heated soil.
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"Which are ALL the sides."
However there are craters in the polar regions that never get any sunlight.
(and that is where there is likely to be ice)
"A Dark Side of The Moon is a record album by Pink Floyd"
Its The Dark Side of The Moon
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Not that exciting? (Score:2)
Is it me, or is that announcement not particularly exciting absent some evidence of life? At the concentrations they are talking, you'd need to mine an enormous amount of "ore" to extract a meaningful amount of water. It seems that the energy requirements to collect the damp soil and extract the water could near the requirements of just bringing what you need from earth.
We already know there's massive water geysers on some of the Jovian moons. Those seem a lot more interesting (if less accessible).
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Well, one plus is that the sun side of the Moon has plentiful amounts of energy in the form of, you guessed it, solar radiation. Building the infrastructure; namely very large ovens capable of cooking the water out of the rock, would obviously be pretty costly and complex, but seeing as you would basically be directly heating the water-bearing material with energy from solar collectors, operation would be cheap.
Presuming we ever figure out fusion well enough, that water might in a century or two end up not
Note: parts per milion. (Score:2)
About 1/50th of 1%. Your typical "dry soil" on Earth will still be several percent water. It'd be hard to get soil this dry in an oven.
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Basically: "this is not the ice you're looking for".
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A useful way to think about this, if you are prone to speculating about "mining" it:
If water costs $1000/kg to transport to the Moon once the full impact of reusable rocketry is felt (Must suggest he can land payload on the Moon for less than $100/kg eventually) then the value of lunar soil for water is only 20 cents/kg -- conversely you need to be able to process the soil to extract water for less than this to compete with simply shipping water from Earth. I expect the cost of designing, building, operatin
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Re:Note: parts per milion. (Score:5, Interesting)
You probably wouldn't want to mine the ice anyway - it's terribly useful where it is for developing lunar habitation, and really expensive to replace. Besides, without significant carbon sources carbon you can't make methane for Starship and most of its contemporaries anyway.
Good news is, it's not that big of a problem. Roughly 80% of Starship's propellant is oxygen, and lunar soil is 42% oxygen by mass. So you can still reduce the propellant demand by from Earth to only 20% of it's base level. Further if rockets shift to an even leaner methane mix given the cost-difference in propellant.
And as a huge added bonus, extracting oxygen from the soil is exactly the same process you'd use to strip-mine plentiful iron, aluminum, magnesium, and calcium. And silicon, lots of silicon, but that's probably not so useful right away. Those metals actually make adequate rocket fuel themselves - aluminum and thermite in particular. And of course, iron, aluminum, and magnesium are all valuable construction materials. So basically, you mine propellant as stage one to fund your business and provide raw materials for further industrial development of the moon.
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Interesting thoughts.
Note that to least conventional approaches to refining alumium are electrocarbothermic - you consume carbon rods to refine the metal. I just went and checked Ullmann's Encyclopedia to see if there were any purely electrolytic methods for refining alumina. Apparently there has been a search for purely inert anodes (which of course means more electricity consumption to compensate), but apparently there's not been any good results; all conceivable anode candidates degrade, not least of why
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There will certainly be lots of room for technical innovation, refining constraints on the moon are going to be a lot different than on Earth - and there's a lot more commercial motive to develop carbon free refinement methods if carbon costs as much as the metal itself. And as those technologies are refined and become more cost effective on Earth, they will offer a method of reducing carbon emissions here.
There's also the possibility of recycling carbon anodes, converting the CO2 into carbon and oxygen -
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It seems that we would most likely recycle the water, so you really only need to bring a little bit at a time, just enough on every flight everytime someone goes up there, after awhile there will be more than enough water.
Unless you can extract water and oxygen out of the rocks, then it's more useful.
In other news (Score:2)
Was confirmed in 2008 (Score:3)
Indian scientists confirmed water on moon in 2008 using Chandrayana probe. They submitted the results in 2008 but was rejected and only after NASA confirmation in 2009, their paper (without any real editing) got accepted in 2010.
http://ozscience.com/space/who... [ozscience.com]
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That was confirmation of it in dark areas of the moon; craters. That might actually be a useful discovery.
This one has it in the sunlight. Good to know how it happens but not really a useful water deposit to harvest.
Why the teasing? (Score:2)
NASA keeps doing the same thing: teasing about a great announcement which turns out to be a meh. The official confirmation of the presence of abundant frozen water in the Moon is great, but such a thing has been expected for ten years now - hardly a revolutionary announcement. The great announcement - a negative one to boot - would have been the certainty of almost no water in the Moon.
If NASA keeps crying out wolf like this, soon nobody will take them seriously. Plus, in the meantime, the JWST (named after
Obviously! (Score:2)
Of course there's water on the moon! Where else would the whales live?
Again? (Score:2)
NASA is constantly finding 'water' on the Moon. Like on Oct 9, 2009 they slammed a Centaur-1 (LCROSS, cost $78M) into the surface (promising a giant cloud ... 'ejecta plume' ... you could probably see from Earth) and reported finding water. They find 'water' everywhere they'd like to go.
Oh but wait, kids. This time it's MOLECULAR WATER! FOR SURE. At least 100 PARTS PER MILLION. (Right where they put that thing that time.) WOLF! WOLF! So now let's put up a LOT MORE Lunar Orbiting Satellites to look for it!!
Water @ Clavius? Is there also a monolith? (Score:1)
Well they found rust first... (Score:2)
The oxygen had been dragged out of the earths atmosphere by solar wind when the moon was on the far side of earth, I would not be surprised if some water vapour made the transition also...