Left: Cumulative ejecta deposited outside of craters. Right: Ejecta deposited inside these craters after they formed.
Scientists who have modeled 4 billion years of the Moon’s meteor-impact history have concluded that the Moon holds more water than previously believed. Much of it is buried, as much as 10 meters deep.
“We looked at the entire time history of ice deposition on the Moon,” said Keven Cannon, a planetary scientist at the Colorado School of Mines and lead author of the study in Geophysical Research Letters. “If the coldest regions have been stable and accumulating ice for billions of years, then some could have very substantial deposits, but they might be buried up to 10 meters deep or more.” more “Moon May Contain Billions of Tons of Buried Ice”
The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has detected evidence of molecular water in the regolith of Clavius Crater, a large crater visible from Earth in the Moon’s southern hemisphere. The airborne SOFIA observatory, a partnership between NASA and the German Aerospace Center, flies in a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft above the atmospheric water that blocks ground observation.
Satellites have had detected “hydrates” in the lunar regolith but could not distinguish between OH (hydroxyl) and H20 (molecular water). SOFIA was able to measure the precise being vibration of the H-O-H molecular bond at 6.1 µm in the infrared.
SOFIA targeted high lunar latitudes near the South Pole where low temperatures could allow migrating water to transiently remain on the surface and high hydroxyl abundances could create and trap water when impacted by small meteorites. Although Clavius has a relatively high concentration of water by lunar standards, says NASA, it is roughly one-hundredth of the water found in the Sahara desert. more “Molecular Water Found in Clavius Crater”
plants growing in lunar and Martian soil simulants. Photo credit: Wamelink et al, Open Agriculture, 2019.
Long-term colonization of the Moon will require settlers to grow much of their own food, and they won’t have any soil rich in organic matter to start with. Hydroponics is one alternative. Growing plans in mineral-rich lunar regolith is another.
Dutch researchers with Wageningen University & Research have been testing a variety of vegetables to see how well they fare in regolith — tomatoes, rye, watercress, leeks, quinoa, peas, radish, spinach, arugula and chives.
The researchers couldn’t use real lunar regolith, but they created a substitute with similar chemical composition from volcanic ash near Flagstaff, Arizona. (To simulate Martian material, they found ash from Hawaii.) Regolith has only a small amount of reactive nitrogen, a critical element for life, and it can store only 30% as much water as organic Earth soil can.
The researchers set up trays containing the lunar regolith, Martian regolith and Earth soil, watered them each day, and studied the results over five months. Their findings, according to Smithsonianmagazine:
Radishes, cress and rye could be harvested and produce seeds.
Artist’s conception of LunaNet being used by astronauts Credit: NASA/Reese Patillo
NASA has issued a Request for Information to help it flresh out plans for LunaNet, a communications and navigation architecture for the Moon.
While communications at present are limited to portions of the Moon facing the Earth, LunaNet would allow robotic landers, rovers, scientific devices and astronauts to transit data to Earth through Moon-orbiting satellites or space stations from the far side or poles of the Moon.
According to GCN, LunaNet is expected to include three categories of services:
Networking services capable of moving data between nodes that adhere to confidentiality, integrity and availability requirements.
Position, navigation and timing services for orientation and velocity determination, as well as time synchronization and dissemination. These services could be used for search and rescue, surface navigation and location tracking
Science services providing situational alerts and scientific measurements that could support predictions of major solar eruptions that affect space weather.
After the success of its Chang’e 4 lander on the far side of the Moon, China has laid out an ambitious roadmap for continued lunar exploration. Chang’e 6 is scheduled to head to the Moon in 2023 or 2024, and Chang’e 7 in 2024 with the aim of landing at the south pole.
Chang’e 7 will have multiple components, including an orbiter, a relay satellite, a lander, a rover, and a mini-flying craft. Scientific payloads will study volatile compounds and isotopes, and measure heat flow through the lunar soil, reports Space.com. The flying craft will carry instrumentation to measure water molecules in permanently shadowed areas.
Chang’e 8, scheduled for the late 2020s, also will focus on the south pole. That mission will test technology for using local resources and 3D-printing manufacturing.
The Earth and Moon shared the same magnetic field some 3.5 billion to 4.1 billion years ago, and the Moon’s field helped shield the Earth from solar radiation that might have stripped away its atmosphere, concludes a NASA-led study published in the journal Science Advances.
“The Moon seems to have presented a substantial protective barrier against the solar wind for the Earth, which was critical to Earth’s ability to maintain its atmosphere during this time,” said Jim Green, NASA’s chief scientist and lead author of the study, as reported by Business Insider India.
The scientists created a computer model to simulate the behavior of the magnetic fields of the two orbs. The magnetospheres of the Moon and Earth would have been magnetically connected in the polar regions of each body. At certain times, the Moon’s magnetosphere would have served as a barrier to harsh solar radiation bombarding the Earth-Moon system.
The model also suggests that there was some atmospheric exchange as well. The Sun’s radiation would have charged neutral particles in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, enabling them to travel to the Moon along the lunar magnetic lines. The process might have contributed to the Moon maintaining a thin atmosphere, including nitrogen.
As the Moon cooled and lost its magnetosphere, solar wind stripped the atmosphere away.
Radio image of the night sky. Credit: MPIA/Glyn Haslam
The far side of the Moon is one of the most radio-quiet locations in the Earth-Moon system, which makes it an favorable spot for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), which scans the skies for radio communications.
Radio telescopes on Earth are located in isolated parts of the globe with minimal radio pollution, but they can’t compare to the far side of the Moon for blocking out radio interference. The idea is not a new one, but it has gotten fresh life thanks to a white paper submitted to the National Academy of Sciences’ Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032. The team is led by Eric J. Michaud, a mathematics undergraduate at UC Berkeley, reports Phys.org.
The need to establish a site for a radio telescope is pressing, says Dr. Pete Worden, former director of NASA’s Ames Research Center. “There is some urgency in establishing a lunar far-side radio-quiet reserve before we get the burgeoning problem we have in Earth orbit with optical interference from communications satellites. We are already concerned about the Chinese communications satellites—so this needs to be a global consensus now!”
Radio noise could be mitigated all the more if the telescope were located in a crater. Crater walls would block out interference from orbiters or spacecraft that will become increasingly common on the Moon.
A lunar location would have two big drawbacks: One would be the cost of delivering the telescope to the far side of the Moon. Another, assuming the main energy source was solar, would be the difficulty of storing enough energy to last a two-week lunar night.
An alternative to a ground facility would be a telescope deployed in lunar orbit. One bonus: the weightlessness of orbit would do away with the need for a supporting structure. But the nature of the Moon’s gravitational field means that most lunar orbits are inherently unstable, which creates a new set of problems.
As Michaud concedes, much work needs to be done before the dream of a lunar SETI observatory can be realized.
Bacon’s bottom line: If the technical hurdles can be addressed, a SETI mission could add impetus to building a lunar transportation and logistical infrastructure and possibly a justification for maintaining a scientific staff on the Moon. Scientific investigation will lead the way in early lunar development.
I don’t know… Someone will to have to do better than this if space tourism is going to take off. I can safely say that the zero-G space toilet would dissuade 90% of the women of my acquaintance from ever leaving the Earth. — JAB
NASA has released its five-year, $28 billion budgetary plan to return four astronauts to the surface of the Moon by 2024 — for the first time in more than 50 years. The aggressive timeline hinges on Congress approving $3.2 billion to kick-start development of new lunar landers.
The plan unveiled Monday, reports Spaceflight Now, assumes that crews will lift off on NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket, fly to the Moon on an Orion capsule, then transfer on a commercially developed lander to shuttle astronauts to and from the lunar surface where they will maintain a base for exploration and scientific investigation.
The Artemis Plan calls for developing a base camp on the lunar South Pole, possibly in Shackleton Crater. Key infrastructure includes the Orion spacecraft to deliver humans to lunar orbit, the Gateway orbiting the Moon to function as a transfer-and-docking station for the lunar lander, and The Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) on the surface of the Moon.
Key elements of the base camp include an unpressurized lunar terrain vehicle, a habitable pressurized rover, a habitation module, power systems, and systems to exploit in situ resources.
NASA also envisions using upgraded spacesuits designed for the lunar surface, allowing more frequent spacewalks, with new-and-improved safety features, custom fitting, simplified maintenance, and better communications. more “NASA Releases Artemis Program Overview”
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded a $14 million task order to Gryphon Technologies to support development of a rocket that can use nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) in Earth orbit, reports Space.com.
The rocket would use fission reactors to heat propellants to extreme temperatures and eject the gas through nozzles to create thrust. The technology would have a thrust-to-weight ratio about 10,000 times higher than that of electric propulsion systems and a specific impulse, or propellant efficiency, two to five times that of traditional chemical rockets, DARPA documents say.
NASA has lauded the potential of NTP technology as well, suggesting that nuclear-powered spacecraft could reach Mars in three to four months, half the time needed by chemical rockets.
Gryphon Technologies, based in Washington, D.C., bills itself as providing engineering and technical solutions to national security organizations.
After the success of its Chang’e 4 lander on the far side of the Moon, China has laid out an ambitious roadmap for continued lunar exploration. Chang’e 6 is scheduled to head to the Moon in 2023 or 2024, and Chang’e 7 in 2024 with the aim of landing at the south pole.
NASA has released its five-year, $28 billion budgetary plan to return four astronauts to the surface of the Moon by 2024 — for the first time in more than 50 years. The aggressive timeline hinges on Congress approving $3.2 billion to kick-start development of new lunar landers.