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Chandrayaan M3 Instrument Confirms Iron-Bearing Minerals On the Moon

Posted by Soulskill on from the that's-no-...-wait-yes-that's-a-moon dept.

William Robinson writes with news that the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), an instrument developed by NASA and sent aboard India's Chandrayaan-1, has confirmed the presence of iron-bearing minerals on the moon. This marks the beginning of an extensive examination of the composition of the lunar surface. "Isro officials said M3 would help in characterising and mapping lunar minerals to ultimately understand the moon's early geological evolution. 'The compositional map that will come out of M3 will have fantastic data on geological formation of the moon,' the official said. Researchers said the relative abundance of magnesium and iron in lunar rocks could help confirm whether the moon was covered by a molten, magma ocean early on in its history. Iron and magnesium will also indicate melting of the moon, if it happened and how it formed later. This metallic element has been found in lunar meteorites, but scientists know little about its distribution in the lunar crust."

4 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. WTF????? by IHC+Navistar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "William Robinson writes with news that the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), an instrument developed by NASA and sent aboard India's Chandrayaan-1, has confirmed the presence of iron-bearing minerals on the moon. This marks the beginning of an extensive examination of the composition of the lunar surface."

    -As if actually analyzing the actual lunar samples brought back by earlier moon missions wasn't enough.....

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    Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
    1. Re:WTF????? by jerep · · Score: 2, Interesting

      India obviously wants their share of the moon's resources too. I doubt you want to know if the moon has minerals just to put stats on paper, someone someday is going to mine it.

      I wonder what is going to happen then, will the corporations share the resources or will we get the moon wars?

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      Do you D?
  2. Prison Colony on the Moon? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Anybody ever see "Outland": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outland_(film)?

    Maybe, in the future, someone is planning to send criminal violators of Internet Censorship Laws to an Outland-like mining colony on the Moon. There, for something to do, they can break Moon rocks with sledgehammers, and extract the iron ore from them. The iron ore will be sent down to Earth on the nanotube elevator.

    But I'm thinking, with the lower gravity, the Moon sledgehammers would have to be bigger to have the same force as those on Earth. Extra Credit Freshman Physics Exam question: How much bigger?

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  3. So lets make some robot building robots already! by Monkeybaister · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Let's bootstrap moon production. Why lug tons of materials up there when we could figure out how to build most of what we want using materials already present on the moon. Leave the expensive task of cargo hauling to components that would cost too much to get the manufacturing equipment there. Let's see if we can get a near self sustaining habitation there before we think of sending more people.