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Water on the Moon

 
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Gord Green
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Joined: 06 Oct 2014
Posts: 2940
Location: Buffalo, NY

PostPosted: Mon Feb 26, 2018 9:25 pm    Post subject: Water on the Moon Reply with quote

https://www.yahoo.com/news/water-could-extracted-over-moon-194900736.html

FROM YAHOO NEWS

Jamie Rigg, Engadget

If we're ever going to colonize another world, we can't rely solely on the supplies we bring with us. We'll have to make use of the resources available at our destination, with water being one of the most important. Not only can we drink it, but add a bit of science and voilà! You've got oxygen to breathe or rocket fuel to fly. Figuring out what resources are where is extremely important, and we've been honing this craft by looking at our celestial ally, the Moon.

A study published last year suggested that water may exist in high quantities in the lunar interior, and now researchers have found evidence of water being distributed across the entire satellite, which is at odds with the widely held theory it's concentrated in the colder spots at the Moon's poles.

The problem with studying water on the Moon is that we're largely relying on spectrometry. The way sunlight bounces off the lunar surface tells us about its chemical composition, but the Moon can also heat up enough to emit infrared light of its own, which is thought to mess with the readings.

And so the Space Science Institute in Colorado went about combining two data sets -- temperature readings from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and spectrometer measurements from India's Chandrayaan-1 orbiter -- to try and mute the impact the Moon's own light has on results.

The institute's research, published in Nature Geoscience, disagrees with the accepted theory that water is concentrated at the poles, and that it travels before settling in these colder regions.

The study of cleaned-up spectrometry data suggests water is present all over the Moon, but unfortunately, it doesn't make a lunar base any more viable. The researchers believe the majority of what they're seeing is probably hydroxyl (OH), not actual water molecules (H2O). In order to make use of the hydroxyl, you'd have to mine, extract and process it -- not nearly as simple as stumbling across a big deposit of ice, then.

While the study may have given us a better understanding of our moon's water reserves, the techniques used could also help us learn more about potential sources of water that exist in our wider solar system and beyond.

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Bud Brewster
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Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17019
Location: North Carolina

PostPosted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 5:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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The more I hear about the advantages of colonizing the Moon, the less enthusiastic I get about those useless colonies on Mars that so many misguided folks are promoting! Rolling Eyes

Here's another article about the presence of water on the Moon — and from the sound of it, the Moon has more in common with Seattle in the rainy season than the Sahara desert.

I made the text of the article I pasted below blue so that my own fascinating comments could be differentiated.

The article is by Sean Martin, published on Monday, Feb 26, 2018 in the publication shown below. I even included the cool picture it has, because . . . well, I like cool pictures.
Cool



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The Moon may be COVERED in water, scientists claim following groundbreaking discovery
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Two lunar missions have found that water on the moon is widely distributed and not confined to a particular region.

The discovery builds on that from last August when scientists at Brown University discovered huge pockets of sub-surface water.

At the time they wrote: The nearly ubiquitous presence of water in large and small lunar pyroclastic deposits adds to the growing evidence that the lunar mantle is an important reservoir of water.”

However, new research has found that almost all of the Moon could be covered in water, which could be used by future astronauts to drink or it can even be converted into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel or oxygen to breathe.


Bud's take on this: The idea that the Moon has water for drinking, oxygen for breathing, and hydrogen for energy generation is just too damn cool for words! Very Happy





Joshua Bandfield, a senior research scientist with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said: "We find that it doesn't matter what time of day or which latitude we look at, the signal indicating water always seems to be present.

"The presence of water doesn't appear to depend on the composition of the surface, and the water sticks around."

The water tends to be in the form of OH, rather than H2O, according to researchers.

The difference between the two is that H2O is made up of one hydrogen atom and one oxygen atom, OH on the other hand is more reactive and tends to attach itself chemically to other molecules.

This would mean that the water would have to be extracted from minerals, whereas H2O tends to flow freely.



]


Bud's take on this: In other words, you can't swing an asphyxiated, frozen cat on the Moon without hitting a few jillion oxygen and hydrogen molecules! Shocked

Not only could this discovery mean that humans could sustain themselves on the Moon or use it as a base for deep space travel, but there could be even bigger implications for how experts can study exoplanets that may also have water which has been hiding from us.

Science website Futurism reads: “As we search for exoplanets, it can be difficult to concretely observe the conditions of their surfaces.

“Perhaps remote sensing instruments and new analysis techniques like those used for this study can improve such observations from afar.”


Bud's take on this: Ah-ha! So, the techniques we develop for finding water on the Moon will help us find resources on other alien planets we colonize! How cool it THAT, fellow space cadets? Very Happy
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