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posted by takyon on Tuesday August 21 2018, @12:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the cold,-wet,-and-close dept.

Ice Confirmed at the Moon's Poles:

In the darkest and coldest parts of its polar regions, a team of scientists has directly observed definitive evidence of water ice on the Moon's surface. These ice deposits are patchily distributed and could possibly be ancient. At the southern pole, most of the ice is concentrated at lunar craters, while the northern pole's ice is more widely, but sparsely spread.

A team of scientists, led by Shuai Li of the University of Hawaii and Brown University and including Richard Elphic from NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, used data from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument to identify three specific signatures that definitively prove there is water ice at the surface of the Moon.

M3, aboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, launched in 2008 by the Indian Space Research Organization, was uniquely equipped to confirm the presence of solid ice on the Moon. It collected data that not only picked up the reflective properties we'd expect from ice, but was able to directly measure the distinctive way its molecules absorb infrared light, so it can differentiate between liquid water or vapor and solid ice.

Most of the newfound water ice lies in the shadows of craters near the poles, where the warmest temperatures never reach above minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of the very small tilt of the Moon's rotation axis, sunlight never reaches these regions.

Also at The Guardian and CNET.

Direct evidence of surface exposed water ice in the lunar polar regions (open, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1802345115) (DX)


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday August 21 2018, @02:01PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Tuesday August 21 2018, @02:01PM (#724159) Journal

    Interesting questions. I've read previously that the Moon does still in fact have an atmosphere, but it consists of very few molecules spaced very far apart from each other - the Apollo landings each produced about twice the total Lunar atmosphere in gases. Anyway, the current gases do bleed off to space somewhat if I remember right. My wild-ass guess is that a significant portion of the water converted to gases (if not steam than back to H and O), and bled out when heated, which is why the ice that's left is in the shadows. As you noted the Moon does orbit the earth (why we get our phases). More mass = more attraction = closer = faster is what I remember, like you. How much so is a different question, and also if you favor the most common theory that the Moon split out from the Earth the timings of that might be relevant (maybe it slowed the departure phase but the Moon was steadily departing anyway - no real idea). It would be interesting to know if the Earth ever actually passes through the Moon's track (around Last Quarter / Waning I'd think). Or if we repass the track close enough (if we do meteor showers reguarly I'd think the track comes back around, but I'm just an amateur observer. Would the atom(s)/molecule(s) rejoin the atmosphere or be repelled by the belts....

    And I wouldn't be surprised at all if micrometeorite bombardment might still liberate a few molecules occasionally in the cold zones, too.

    Is there an astrophysicist in the house? :)

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