Water on the Moon, Data from multiple missions seems to indicate... |
Water on the Moon, Data from multiple missions seems to indicate... |
Sep 24 2009, 12:23 AM
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2785 Joined: 10-November 06 From: Pasadena, CA Member No.: 1345 |
This probably deserves it's own thread. Seems the evidence is not specific to only one mission...
space.com article: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0909...-discovery.html -------------------- Some higher resolution images available at my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/
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Guest_Enceladus75_* |
Sep 26 2009, 12:13 AM
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#2
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Guests |
This is indeed a pretty astounding discovery that has the potential to change everything. Especially coming after the last few years when there was mounting scepticism of any water being present on the Moon.
Planetary science discoveries in ways seem to be like the water on the Moon story - first seen as impossible, then with further discovery, possible, and then probable if not certain. With even closer scrutiny, scepticism creeps in and the original theories are called into question but then a new breakthrough takes place and the earlier theories are either vindicated or a completely new, unknown of discovery crops up - sometimes in a dramatic way. This is how science works! And despite its operational life cut short, it's a fantastic achievement from Chandryaan 1. Will LRO be able to confirm the announcement? Does anyone think the imminent impact of LCROSS will reveal water in its impact cloud? |
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Sep 26 2009, 01:00 AM
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#3
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 87 Joined: 17-May 08 Member No.: 4114 |
Will LRO be able to confirm the announcement? It was suggested in the press conference that LROs LAMP may shed light (ahem) on the subject. If there's enough water, it seems like LEND may do so as well. Remember that one of the surprises of the early LEND data was finding hydrogen outside of the permanently shadowed craters. I suspect there is also a rush to re-analyze more existing data. How many other spacecraft have taken calibration data from the moon ? Did Galileo ? Rosetta (which has another earth gravity assist coming up in November) ? It looks like KAGUYAs SP cuts out just short of the spectral feature that M3 detected, but maybe there's something else if you know what you are looking for. What about the Chang'e imaging spectrometer ? I'm sure there's a bunch of people digging through old Apollo papers now too, and thinking about new things to do with those samples. The hype associating this with water as a resource may be overblown, but definitely cool science. |
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