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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Sep 26 2009, 11:48 PM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Not to be a wet blanket about the whole lunar water thing, but I still think that this discovery will ultimately prove to be solely of mineralogical/scientific interest rather than a practical future resource.
If there were endogenous water deposits at anything like an accessible depth anywhere on the Moon you'd think that aeons of slow outgassing would have built a pair of substantial polar caps in the permanently shadowed regions, even though most of the H2O would have been photodissociated upon release (most of which probably would have happened in the daytime). These caps would have been 'gardened' by macro/micrometeorite impacts, sure, but there would still be quite a bit of water at or near the surface. Evidence to date indicates that, at best, there is a very sparse amount of ice in the polar regions throroughly mixed with the regolith. So...I wouldn't be investing in any lunar well-digging companies just yet. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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