LCROSS Impact Data Indicates Water on Moon

11.13.09

The visible camera image showing the ejecta plume at about 20 seconds after impact.
Credit: NASA
Click image for full resolution.
The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water.

Secrets the moon has been holding, for perhaps billions of years, are now being revealed to the delight of scientists and space enthusiasts alike.

NASA today opened a new chapter in our understanding of the moon. Preliminary data from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus cater near the moon’s south pole.

The impact created by the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket created a two-part plume of material from the bottom of the crater. The first part was a high angle plume of vapor and fine dust and the second a lower angle ejecta curtain of heavier material. This material has not seen sunlight in billions of years.

Data from the down-looking near-infrared spectrometer. The red curve shows how the spectra would look for a "grey" or "colorless" warm (230 C) dust cloud. The yellow areas indicate the water absorption bands.
Credit: NASA
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"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.

Scientists have long speculated about the source of vast quantities of hydrogen that have been observed at the lunar poles. The LCROSS findings are shedding new light on the question of water, which could be more widespread and in greater quantity than previously suspected.

Permanently shadowed regions could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data. In addition, water, and other compounds represent potential resources that could sustain future lunar exploration.

Since the impacts, the LCROSS science team has been working almost nonstop analyzing the huge amount of data the spacecraft collected. The team concentrated on data from the satellite's spectrometers, which provide the most definitive information about the presence of water. A spectrometer examines light emitted or absorbed by materials that helps identify their composition.

Data from the ultraviolet/visible spectrometer taken shortly after impact showing emission lines (indicated by arrows). These emission lines are diagnostic of compounds in the vapor/debris cloud.
Credit: NASA
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"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."

LCROSS was launched June 18, 2009 as a companion mission to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After separating from LRO, the LCROSS spacecraft held onto the spent Centaur upper stage rocket of the launch vehicle, executed a lunar swingby and entered into a series of long looping orbits around the Earth.

After traveling approximately 113 days and nearly 5.6 million miles (9 million km), the Centaur and LCROSS separated on final approach to the moon. Traveling a fast as a speeding bullet, the Centaur impacted the lunar surface shortly after 4:31 a.m. PDT Oct. 9 with LCROSS watching with its onboard instruments. Approximately four minutes of data was collected before the LCROSS itself impacted the lunar surface.

Working closely with scientists from LRO and other observatories that viewed the impact, the LCROSS team is working to understand the full scope of the LCROSS data. LRO continues to make passes over the impact site to give the LCROSS team additional insight into the mechanics of the impact and its resulting craters.

What other secrets will the moon reveal? The analysis continues!

Click here for more images of the results.

Jonas Dino
NASA Ames Research Center

Water on the moon is awesome news!

INDONESIAN ASTEROID: Picture this: A 10-meter wide asteroid hits Earth and explodes in the atmosphere with the energy of a small atomic bomb. Frightened by thunderous sounds and shaking walls, people rush out of their homes, thinking that an earthquake is in progress. All they see is a twisting trail of debris in the mid-day sky:

Click to view an Indonesian news report

This really happened on Oct. 8th around 11 am local time in the coastal town of Bone, Indonesia. The Earth-shaking blast received remarkably little coverage in Western press, but meteor scientists have given it their full attention. "The explosion triggered infrasound sensors of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) more than 10,000 km away," report researchers Elizabeth Silber and Peter Brown of the Univ. of Western Ontario in an Oct. 19th press release. Their analysis of the infrasound data revealed an explosion at coordinates 4.5S, 120E (close to Bone) with a yield of about 50 kton of TNT. That's two to three times more powerful than World War II-era atomic bombs.

The asteroid that caused the blast was not known before it hit and took astronomers completely by surprise. According to statistical studies of the near-Earth asteroid population, such objects are expected to collide with Earth on average every 2 to 12 years. "Follow-on observations from other instruments or ground recovery efforts would be very valuable in further refining this unique event," say Silber and Brown.

This is so amazing! I just had to share this story.

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October 15, 2009: For years, researchers have known that the solar system is surrounded by a vast bubble of magnetism. Called the "heliosphere," it springs from the sun and extends far beyond the orbit of Pluto, providing a first line of defense against cosmic rays and interstellar clouds that try to enter our local space. Although the heliosphere is huge and literally fills the sky, it emits no light and no one has actually seen it.

Until now.

NASA's IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) spacecraft has made the first all-sky maps of the heliosphere and the results have taken researchers by surprise. The maps are bisected by a bright, winding ribbon of unknown origin:

Above: IBEX's all-sky map of energetic neutral atom emission reveals a bright filament of unknown origin. V1 and V2 indicate the positions of the Voyager spacecraft. [more]

"This is a shocking new result," says IBEX principal investigator Dave McComas of the Southwest Research Institute. "We had no idea this ribbon existed--or what has created it. Our previous ideas about the outer heliosphere are going to have to be revised."

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Although the ribbon looks bright in the IBEX map, it does not glow in any conventional sense. The ribbon is not a source of light, but rather a source of particles--energetic neutral atoms or ENAs. IBEX's sensors can detect these particles, which are produced in the outer heliosphere where the solar wind begins to slow down and mix with interstellar matter from outside the solar system.

"This ribbon winds between the two Voyager spacecraft and was not observed by either of them," notes Eric Christian, IBEX deputy mission scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It's like having two weather stations, but missing the big storm that runs between them."

Unlike the Voyager spacecraft, which have spent decades traveling to the edge of the solar system for in situ sampling, IBEX stayed closer to home. It is in Earth orbit, spinning around and collecting ENAs from all directions. This gives IBEX the unique "big picture" view necessary to discover something as vast as the ribbon.

The ribbon also has fine structure--small filaments of ENA emission no more than a few degrees wide: image. The fine structure is as much of a mystery as the ribbon itself, researchers say.

One important clue: The ribbon runs perpendicular to the direction of the galactic magnetic field just outside the heliosphere, as shown in the illustration at right.

"That cannot be a coincidence," says McComas. But what does it mean? No one knows. "We're missing some fundamental aspect of the interaction between the heliosphere and the rest of the galaxy. Theorists are working like crazy to figure this out."

Understanding the physics of the outer heliosphere is important because of the role it plays in shielding the solar system against cosmic rays. The heliosphere's size and shape are key factors in determining its shielding power and, thus, how many cosmic rays reach Earth. For the first time, IBEX is revealing how the heliosphere might respond when it bumps into interstellar clouds and galactic magnetic fields.

"IBEX is now making a second all-sky map, and we're eager to see if the ribbon is changing," says McComas. "Watching the ribbon evolve--if it is evolving--could yield more clues."

Stay tuned for updates.

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

more information

IBEX Home Page (NASA) IBEX Mission Page (SWRI) IBEX is the latest in NASA's series of low-cost, rapidly developed Small Explorers space missions. Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Tx., leads and developed the mission with a team of national and international partners. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the Explorers Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

"This is a shocking new result," says IBEX principle investigator Dave McComas.

Shocking is an understatement. I can not wait to learn more.

Tiny ancestor is T. rex blueprint

By Judith Burns Science reporter, BBC News

The skull of R. kriegsteini is dwarfed by the skull of a full-sized descendant

A 3m-long dinosaur fossil from China which predates T. Rex by 60 million years is a blueprint for the mighty carnivore, say researchers.

They tell Science magazine that the fossil displays the same features as T. rex but in miniature.

The new species, Raptorex kriegsteini, would have weighed around 65kg; its descendants were 90 times as massive.

Scientists believe it could be the "missing link" between earlier species of dinosaur and T. rex.

The 125-million-year-old specimen suggests that T. rex's characteristic big head with enhanced jaw, relatively small forearms and huge back legs were inherited from this much smaller dinosaur, and that the body type changed little over millions of years except in size.

This is an amazing discovery that has changed the evolutionary theory of T-Rex.

Excel 2010: Another Opportunity Missed

In March of 2006 I glimpsed the new charting capabilities of Excel 2007 for the first time and wrote about them in an article titled “Excel’s New Charting Engine: Preview of an Opportunity Missed.” After waiting for years to see how the world’s most popular data analysis software would improve its sadly lacking charting capabilities, I mourned the opportunity for improvement that was almost entirely missed. Essentially, an entirely new charting engine in Excel 2007 replaced the old one, but what it brought with it was a fresh array of flashy visual effects that encouraged us to hide our data behind a thick layer of cheap makeup. Within two days of my article’s publication, I received an email from Scott Ruble, the person in charge of charting functionality in Microsoft Office products. Scott invited me to help the team improve the charting capabilities of the product’s next major release—Excel 2010—which will become available sometime during the first half of next year. We’ve had several conversations since, including a teleconference with the team. Early glimpses into the charting capabilities of Excel 2010 are now beginning to surface, and it appears that the opportunity to improve the product’s data visualization capabilities has once again been missed. Although I haven’t seen an advance version of the product myself, those who have tell me that it includes only one change to charting: the addition of sparklines. What a shame.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m thrilled that a version of Tufte’s sparklines will be added. Assuming that the implementation is well designed, this will eliminate the need for an add-in product if you want to display a set of time-series values as a simple sparkline, but this is a single grain of sand compared to an entire seashore of need. No single product in the world is used more than Excel for analytics, not because it’s a good tool for data exploration, analysis, and presentation—it isn’t—but because almost everyone in the world who works with quantitative data has it. Just imagine how much the world would benefit if Excel were more powerful and better designed. I was frustrated and upset when Excel 2007 missed the mark, but now with Excel 2010 trying to assuage our misery with nothing but sparklines, I’m inclined to give up on the product entirely as a tools for data analysis. Fortunately, where Excel has failed, alternative products have emerged that deliver effective and visionary analytical abundance.

Will Microsoft play a role in the future of data analytics? Although the company boasts a business intelligence (BI) solution and even declared its commitment with the first annual Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference in May of 2007 (the 2009 conference was cancelled), only its database does anything particularly useful for BI so far. The other pieces that have been awkwardly rubber-banded together into a so-called BI solution suggest the lack of a strategy or a confused one at best, and previews of coming additions, such as Project Gemini, suggest nothing but already dated functionality for the future. I don’t have a bias against Microsoft because it’s huge and powerful; I have a progressively growing disappointment with it because of unfulfilled potential. If Microsoft seriously applied itself to the task, it could probably do some wonderful for the world of analytics. At this point, Microsoft will have to do something big, totally unexpected, and uncharacteristically well designed if it hopes to play a role in the future of analytics. I would welcome this with arms wide open, but I’m not holding my breath.

Take care,

Another version of Excel and another negative critique by Stephen Few. With so many data visualization evangelists out there like Edward Tufte, Stephen Few, and Naomi Robbins, there is no reason for the most influential software developer out there to be missing the mark.

Ships Spraying Sea Water May Offer Climate Quick Fix (Update1)

By Jeremy van Loon and Christian Wienberg

Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- A fleet of sail-powered, ocean-going vessels spraying sea water in the air could save billions of dollars and allow the world to continue emitting carbon dioxide like it does by burning oil and coal.

Marine cloud whitening, which allows solar radiation to bounce off water vapor, at $9 billion would be more cost- effective than reducing CO2 emissions, according to a study by the think tank headed by Bjoern Lomborg, a professor at the Copenhagen Business School.

Geo-engineering projects like cloud whitening and painting roofs white to reflect heat are attracting attention among some policy makers as the world looks at alternative ways to combat global warming. Most plans to cut CO2 emissions involve using more wind and solar power, boosting energy efficiency and constructing air-tight buildings.

“People are only hearing about one solution to climate change and that’s to cut carbon-dioxide emissions,” Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” (Cambridge University Press, 2001), said in a telephone interview. “In a recession, I’m sure people see the point in finding the cheapest and most effective ways of fighting climate change.”

The study on alternatives to reducing CO2 emissions comes four months before negotiators from more than 180 countries meet in Copenhagen as part of United Nations-sponsored talks to find ways to reduce greenhouse gases and limit global temperature gains to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) after an increase of about 0.8 degrees since industrialization.

White Clouds

Spraying salt water would introduce salt particles onto which water vapor can condense, forming white clouds in the same way they are created from sulphates emitted from ship engine exhausts and dust from volcanoes. The process would help to reflect 1 to 2 percent of the sun’s radiation and “cancel out” the warming caused by doubling the levels of atmospheric CO2 since pre-industrial times, according to the report.

The unmanned ships spraying the sea water would be powered by the wind, with electricity generated by turbines using the vessel’s movement through the water to provide energy for the spray. The system would yield $2,000 worth of climate benefits for every dollar spent, according to Eric Bickel and Lee Lane, the researchers who wrote the report. The document didn’t specify how many ships would be needed.

The world should try to have “white roofs everywhere” to help fight climate change, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on May 26. Painting flat roofs of homes and commercial buildings white would reflect more of the sun’s heat back to space and reduce electricity used for air conditioning by as much as 15 percent, Chu said.

‘Frankenstein Ideas’

“Some of these geo-engineering solutions are like Frankenstein ideas,” said Kim Carstensen, head of the World Wildlife Federation’s global climate initiative. “There are consequences that we only half know about. And it doesn’t offer solutions on the scale we require.”

Sea fertilization, which involves adding iron shavings to the sea to promote the growth of CO2-absorbing algae, is another idea attracting attention.

Humans need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 50 percent to 85 percent by 2050 in order to limit the risk of exceeding the 2-degree target. Exceeding that figure would mean rising sea levels that swamp coastal cities, drought and desertification elsewhere, the United Nations Environment Programme says.

‘Eye Off Ball’

“The biggest problem I see with geo-engineering is that it invites us to take our eye off the ball,” said Chris Henschel, a policy manager at the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. “The world’s attention needs to be focused on getting a strong agreement in Copenhagen for major reductions in emissions.”

Tweaking Mother Nature’s ways may come with a price. Research still needs to be done to determine the effects of geo- engineering and how rain patterns, cloud formations and other atmospheric processes may be altered, Lomborg said.

“It’s true that everything comes with a risk,” he said. “But there are also risks connected with carbon-dioxide cuts.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Jeremy van Loon in Berlin at jvanloon@bloomberg.netChristian Wienberg in Copenhagen at cwienberg@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 7, 2009 04:40 EDT

Very interesting global climate news story. I am glad to see some very smart people are out their trying to help solve the global warming issues.

What Hit Jupiter?	08.03.2009
--> + Play Audio | + Download Audio | + Email to a friend | + Join mailing list August 3, 2009: It began with a furrowed brow, a moment of puzzlement, quickly dismissed. The date was July 19, 2009. Amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley was photographing Jupiter from his backyard observatory in Murrumbateman, Australia, when something odd caught his eye. "My attention was fixed on the Great Red Spot, which was setting beautifully over Jupiter's horizon," recalls Wesley. "I almost didn't notice the dark blemish near Jupiter's south pole, and when I did, I put it out of my mind." It's just another dark storm on Jupiter. "That's what I thought at first, but something about the dark mark puzzled me, it didn't look right, and I couldn't stop stealing glances at it."

This is an amazing story with some great photos. Make sure you read the whole story at: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/03aug_whathitjupiter.htm?list947299#

I started testing the http://www.addatweet.com Firefox addin for commenting on websites via my twitter account. It is a great idea but does take away from comments at an actual website. However, I do get to see what other twitter users and my followers have to say.

For me, I will continue to use it for know and post on the actual website. Double the work, but I think worth it for now.