The news this morning from NASA that their LCROSS probe impact with the moon has unearthed water on the moon.
“In the first look at results from the LCROSS mission, which sent a probe crashing into the Cabeus crater near the moon’s south pole, NASA’s main investigator said their instruments clearly detected water, despite the underwhelming plume.
This news is potentially massive for any future missions to the moon or even the possibilities of establishing a future permanent moon base. If there is a fresh source of water on the moon it makes the options around supporting a permanent human crew a lot easier.
I can see it now: moon based hydroelectric power dams.
The news that NASA’s impact with the moon failed to create the huge dust cloud that was predicted has left me wondering if that is evidence that the moon is a lot younger than previous thought. And if this is true then could it also hold that the earth is also a lot younger than the commonly held thought.
Now first I will give a disclaimer I am no moon or space expert, I only hold a passing interest in the subject, and I am happy to be corrected or proved wrong on any scientific information I present below.
Until this morning the view was that the moon was covered in a huge amount of dust (and potentially ice) built up over many millions of years by collisions with space objects (comets and the like), so like the sand on a beach covers the real surface sometimes to metres deep, the moon dust acted like sand and covered the real surface of the moon by many metres of dust.
However the failure to kick up this dust may suggest a few things.
The moon is not as old as we expected and therefore there is a lot less dust on the planet.
The dust on the moon is a lot stronger than we expected, therefore the chemical bonds and electrostatic bonds between each piece of dust is much stronger than we expected and therefore there was less of a dust storm (a lot like how mud is a lot more sticky than dry dirt)
That the ice inside the dust made the dust a lot more sticky than we were expecting.
Although the moon collects dust over time there may have been much bigger collisions in the past that have kicked a lot of this dust back into space, so while the moon acts as a giant vacuum cleaner stopping things hitting earth, it may every so often get its own bag emptied with a huge collision.
The dust on the moon accumulates much slower than we expected, this could mean there have been less collisions with the moon in the past then what we see today.
My personal preference is for the first idea to hold true, that would give creationists a much stronger leg to stand on if they can show the moon is a lot younger than we thought it was, however, at the same time I am very interested in if any my other ideas hold water. NASA will hopefully reveal some more info on what happened and while the dust cloud didn’t arrive as expected in the next few days, I am hoping it is exciting rather than just another typically NASA we stuffed up moment like has happened plenty of times before.
So if you didn’t know already late last night NASA deliberately crashed two probes into the moon to try and kick up a dust cloud hopefully containing water. It turns out it was an epic failure with nothing happening.
The spacecraft ploughed into a 60-mile-wide crater called Cabeus, which is permanently in shade at the lunar south pole. Scientists believe the crater may contain frozen water and expected it to be kicked up by the impact. One theory is that the impact site was unexpectedly hard and that rock and soil gouged out by the impact failed to rise high enough to be lit up by sunlight.
“If it turns out to be as dull as it looked, I’d imagine the soil just didn’t respond as was hoped to being hit,” said Vincent Eke, an astronomer at the University of Durham who helped Nasa choose the impact site. “It might mean we don’t get sufficient data, which would be a shame,” he added.
So all those people who called Nasa’s headquarters in Washington DC with a flood of calls from people objecting to the agency “bombing” the moon, fearing disruption to tides on Earth and even their menstrual cycles have nothing to worry about.
But NASA have some explaining to why their predicted impact that would throw up a six-mile-high cloud of lunar dust and rock which could be scanned for evidence of frozen water didn’t happen.
It just goes to show we do not know as much about the world as what we think we do and we should never taken anything in science as fact, it is all theory until a new theory replaces it.
40 years ago this week man first conquered the moon. And the first man on the moon Neil Armstrong uttered those immortal words
That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
But has it really been a giant leap for mankind? During a three year period between 1969 – 1972 we six manned missions landed on the moon. But in the 37 years since we last landed there no one has gone beyond the orbit of the earth. So much for those holidays to the moon, Jupiter and Mars. So much for that giant leap.
What did however have a giant leap was robotkind. In the past 40 years we have sent probes out of this solar system, into the sun, and off to investigate every planet in the solar system. We have landed probes on Venus. And had our best success on Mars where to this day two little robots continue to drive around, having robot fun and teaching us heaps at the same time.
But some 150 or so flights into space later what have we really achieved for mankind? We have an International Space Station that is well behind schedule but at the same time the largest thing ever constructed in space, so large that it can be seen from earth with the naked eye. We have GPS, Satellite TV, and a number of other cool gadgets that have completely changed the way we do business on earth through the use of space. And we have used space telescopes to see where no man has seen before.
So where to now? Do we go back to the moon and then Mars as NASA is now finally pursuing. Or do we just stay in orbit. Doing cool experiments and finding ways to better our lives on earth? I for one would still love to own a holiday home on Mars before I die.
In the next day or so I am planning quite a large post reflecting on 40 years since the moon and what have we achieved through that giant leap for mankind. But while I am still getting my thoughts together over that and researching some stuff I came across this cool video from NASA that was released in November of last year showing their plans to get man back to the moon. With the exception of separate personal and cargo launches the rest looks very similar to that of the old Saturn V style rockets.
Apollo may seem like ancient history, but those artifacts on the Moon are still sitting there, in many ways as fresh as the day they were placed there.
In all of human history, there are many dividing lines we can arbitrarily assign. Before and after the use of atomic weapons, before and after the invention of the light bulb, before and after this war or that.
But there is one dividing line that can inspire us, fill us with wonder, make us dream of bigger goals, higher aspirations, better ways to live our lives for the future. And that is the dividing line between the time we were a race shackled to the ground, confined to a single planet… and the time a human being stepped foot on another world.
And there it is, in pictures and in fact. This is what these pictures mean. We humans spend a lot of time looking around, looking out, looking down. But sometimes, for just a brief moment, we look up. We did it once before, and it’s time to do it again.
It is like time is standing still and looking back at us. Some of us believe that the pyramids and other amazing structures were left behind to us by aliens from other lands. Now we have left evidence of our prior existance on another world and imagine if an alien lifeform came across it would they start an eagar search for life on that world?
