Posted by Florian Wardell | 4 comments
There’s water on the moon!
October 9th, 2009. What a day. Obama gets his Nobel prize, a clown broadcasts live from the ISS with U2, and NASA shoots an empty rocket stage into the moon, followed by a probe designed to analyze the composition of the plume that the impact generated. The whole purpose of the mission was to basically see if water was present in large quantities on the moon.
Spaceflight was a the very heart of the news these last few months: During the summer, Apollo 11′s 50th birthday had been thoroughly celebrated, in October the last space tourist (before a long time) blasted off toward the ISS, the first prototype of the new American spaceship Ares had its first flight, and meanwhile, the White House reviews NASA’s goals and budget for the years to come, as the Space Shuttles will be retiring next year. The LCROSS mission further increased spaceflight’s hype, due to its quite spectacular nature. People gathered around giants screens, camped out at night and amateur astronomers from around the world tried to catch a glimpse of the impact, which occurred on the moon’s southern hemisphere, in the Cabeus crater. As crowds were disappointed – they cold not see anything through their telescopes, and only a very small white spot on the mission controller’s screens – geeks celebrated: The impact was spot-on, the data was intact, and sensors “worked better than expected”, according to NASA.
Yesterday, the first results of the data analysis were published. Good news: There is water on our satellite. “We’re unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbor and by extension the solar system. It turns out the moon harbors many secrets, and LCROSS has added a new layer to our understanding,” said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“We are ecstatic,” said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “Multiple lines of evidence show water was present in both the high angle vapor plume and the ejecta curtain created by the LCROSS Centaur impact. The concentration and distribution of water and other substances requires further analysis, but it is safe to say Cabeus holds water.”
The team took the known near infrared spectral signatures of water and other materials and compared them to the spectra collected by the LCROSS near infrared spectrometer of the impact. “We were only able to match the spectra from LCROSS data when we inserted the spectra for water,” said Colaprete. “No other reasonable combination of other compounds that we tried matched the observations. The possibility of contamination from the Centaur also was ruled out.”
Additional confirmation came from an emission in the ultraviolet spectrum that was attributed to hydroxyl, one product from the break-up of water by sunlight. When atoms and molecules are excited, they release energy at specific wavelengths that are detected by the spectrometers. A similar process is used in neon signs. When electrified, a specific gas will produce a distinct color. The ultraviolet visible spectrometer detected hydroxyl signatures just after impact that are consistent with a water vapor cloud in sunlight.
Data from the other LCROSS instruments are being analyzed for additional clues about the state and distribution of the material at the impact site. The LCROSS science team along with colleagues are poring over the data to understand the entire impact event, from flash to crater, with the final goal being the understanding of the distribution of materials, and in particular volatiles, within the soil at the impact site. “The full understanding of the LCROSS data may take some time. The data is that rich,” said Colaprete. “Along with the water in Cabeus, there are hints of other intriguing substances. The permanently shadowed regions of the moon are truly cold traps, collecting and preserving material over billions of years.”
Water on the moon would greatly facilitate a hypothetical construction of a moon base, which was the plan laid out by the Bush administration in 2004. We’ll see about that, but meanwhile let’s enjoy the idea that maybe, one day, we’ll sip a glass of moon water while watching an earthrise. Also, good luck to Atlantis, which is scheduled to lift off tomorrow for the STS-129 mission, which will deliver spare parts to the ISS.
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