Earlier this month, scientists at NASA reported the finding of a significant amount of water on the surface of the Moon.
The discovery was made by the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), a spacecraft launched by NASA in June of last year, whose main purpose is to the map out the surface of the Moon in preparation for a possible return by humans in the future.
The craft was piggybacked to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, another satellite that is currently in orbit around the Moon. Last October, LCROSS broke away from the Orbiter and crashed into the Cabeus crater on the Moon’s surface.
In November, NASA scientists reported the first discovery related to LCROSS. The massive 5,600 mile-per-hour impact had kicked up approximately 26 gallons of water out of the crater.
This number was revised upward to 40 gallons following calculations related to the amount of lunar dirt displaced by the impact and the concentration of water calculated to be in the dirt.
Cabeus is a crater near the moon’s south pole that lies in almost perpetual darkness with a temperature at 370 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. The water discovered there was in the form of a mixture of almost pure grains of ice, and lunar dirt.
According to Anthony Colaprete, the concentration of water in the dirt ranged between 5.6 to 8.5 percent. This range is considerably higher than that of the water concentration in the sands of the Sahara desert, one of Earth’s driest regions, which lies in a range of 2 to 5 percent.
The water can be utilized after purification for drinking, or be broken into its constituent elements, oxygen and hydrogen, as fuel for space rockets to return home, or proceed onward to planets like Mars.
LCROSS also discovered the presence of several elements and molecules in the crater. Because of its location and very low temperature, the Cabeus crater acts as a “cold trap,” preserving the debris of several billion years of lunar impacts.
An infrared analysis of the dust plume kicked by the impact identified the presence of the elements sodium and silver, while another analysis performed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, identified calcium, magnesium and mercury.
By analyzing the relative abundances of these metallic elements, NASA scientists can begin to speculate on the type and frequency of objects that have been hitting the Moon in its history. For example, they have realized that some of these elements are very similar to those found in comets.
LCROSS and the lunar orbiter are part of NASA’s Constellation program, which was started in 2005 with the objective of returning humans to the moon.
This was the program whose cancellation was pushed for by President Obama earlier this year in April, when he gave a speech on his vision for the American space program.
Despite these new discoveries, scientists have warned against overexcitement over these analyzes. Richard A. Kerr, a scientist who has covered planetary and earth scientists for over 30 years for Science magazine, points to the vast difference between the hydrosphere of earth and that of the Moon.
First, he points to the fact the no water on the moon is ever in a liquid state as it is on earth. Second, he indicates that reservoirs of water discovered on the Moon, are sometimes so sparse that they can only be identified at particular points in the lunar year, when temperatures allow.
