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NASA Finds Major Ice Source In Moon Crater

Posted by Soulskill on from the water-the-chances dept.

coondoggie writes with news that a NASA survey of the moon's Shackleton crater by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has provided data indicating as much as 22% of the crater's surface may be covered in ice. "The team of NASA and university scientists using laser light from LRO's laser altimeter examined the floor of Shackleton crater. They found the crater's floor is brighter than those of other nearby craters, which is consistent with the presence of small amounts of ice. ... The spacecraft mapped Shackleton crater with unprecedented detail, using a laser to illuminate the crater's interior and measure its albedo or natural reflectance. The laser light measures to a depth comparable to its wavelength, or about a micron. That represents a millionth of a meter, or less than one ten-thousandth of an inch. The team also used the instrument to map the relief of the crater's terrain based on the time it took for laser light to bounce back from the moon's surface. The longer it took, the lower the terrain's elevation. ... The crater, named after the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, is two miles deep and more than 12 miles wide. Like several craters at the moon's south pole, the small tilt of the lunar spin axis means Shackleton crater's interior is permanently dark and therefore extremely cold."

22 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. MIGHT by Dthief · · Score: 5, Insightful

    MIGHT have ice....anywhere from 0-22%....inconclusive results which suggest further study is needed to figure out where in this range it really is.

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    1. Re:MIGHT by dan828 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The moon's axial tilt is far less than the earth's. Only about 1.5 degrees as opposed to about 23.5 degrees for the earth. The only difficulty is that the solar arrays would have to be almost vertical, be just finding a nice hillside for them would solve that.

    2. Re:MIGHT by mbone · · Score: 5, Informative

      Never have had to think about solar cells on the moon's poles :)

      Lots of people have been. There are regions of the rim of Shackleton Crater which are never out of the Sun*, so solar power could be collected there and beamed down into the crater. This is the reason why NASA selected power beaming for a Game Changing Technology award.

      * Well, maybe never, or maybe never except for a few days every few years. There are still arguments about the terrain models, so I believe the point is still uncertain. And, of course, you will lose the Sun every time there is a Lunar eclipse (i.e., when the Earth gets in the way).

    3. Re:MIGHT by mbone · · Score: 2

      The rim of the crater is illuminated by the Sun, which for good part of the month lights up the crater interior brighter than full Moon on Earth, and prevents it from getting colder than about 70 K.

    4. Re:MIGHT by networkBoy · · Score: 2

      Seriously, there is nothing new about nuclear devices in space. In addition they have an excellent safety record, both the RTG kind and the few "conventional" powerplants.
      -nB

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    5. Re:MIGHT by trout007 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We are working on it.

      https://www.facebook.com/NASA.ISRU

      --
      I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
  2. try this: by woodworx · · Score: 4, Funny

    we should shoot a water cannon at that crater and store some frozen water for later use!

    1. Re:try this: by Nadaka · · Score: 3, Informative

      0 if you move it in solid form.

  3. Dark Side by SJHillman · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Shackleton crater's interior is permanently dark"

    So that's the dark side of the moon that Pink Floyd was talking about

    1. Re:Dark Side by Exrio · · Score: 3, Informative

      Ah, so the prism is actually ice, and the white beam is actually six laser beams combined. That explains a lot.

  4. umm... by Terracotta122 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Isn't there ice everywhere in the solar system? What next? Big Buck Bunny lives on mars?

  5. Mrs. Source relieved. by MRe_nl · · Score: 4, Funny

    The Major had been missing for a week.

    --
    "Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
  6. Ok by busyqth · · Score: 5, Funny

    So we know where the bar goes.
    What's the next most important item? Life support?

  7. Finally don't have to go to arctic to get ice by shoppa · · Score: 4, Funny

    Finally, we no longer have to send men on a hazardous trip to the arctic every time we need more ice.

  8. There is no dark side of the moon, really. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Matter of fact, it's all dark.

  9. Fascinating! by gman003 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I remember reading up on Shackleton Crater a while back, when I was trying to write a sci-fi story (it never really got anywhere - sorry!). I needed a name for the main character, most surnames are based on either location or occupation. At the time of the story, humanity is just beginning to spread beyond the solar system, so the Moon's been inhabited for quite some time. Thus: Captain Ran fr'Shackleton (I'm also a bit of a Tolkien fan, so I tried to think about how the language will change over the next few centuries - we seem to like shortening things, so I cut a syllable out of the common cognomen "Ryan" and abbreviated "from").

    Anyways...

    We've long suspected that there was ice there, and several other factors made this a quite good location for a moonbase (good terrain, relatively well-explored, and a crater in general is a good idea because it will help protect against radiation). If it really does have that much ice, it might actually go from "theoretically possible" to "economically feasible" to build a moonbase.

    1. Re:Fascinating! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I always thought our Moon was a good place for a moonbase. Not to sure why we'd put a moonbase on anything besides a moon really.

  10. Bathroom? by slapout · · Score: 2

    Great, they found were the astronauts peed.

    --
    Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
  11. Found evidence of Found by jklovanc · · Score: 5, Informative

    I just wish the editors would do their job and change headlines to what the article actually says;

    ASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has returned data that indicate ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in a crater located on the moon's south pole.

    They found the crater's floor is brighter than those of other nearby craters, which is consistent with the presence of small amounts of ice.

    In addition to the possible evidence of ice,...

    Nowhere did they state they found ice or in what quantity. As for quantity, it could be a small quantity spread over a wide area.

  12. An easier to understand number by mfwitten · · Score: 5, Funny

    That represents a millionth of a meter, or less than one ten-thousandth of an inch.

    For those of you who are having trouble visualizing this: That's about a little more than 9 billionths of a football field (on the short number scale, of course).

  13. Re:We're going to the moon! by mosb1000 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What's the point of leaving natural resources in place?

  14. Re:Micron? by mbone · · Score: 5, Informative

    You are mixing up albedo / reflectivity with ranging. Skin depth / surface detail info is not the same as geodetic accuracy (which is at the 10 cm level at best without a corner cube retroreflector).

    Here is an example - suppose I shine a flashlight on my car at night. Can I tell if it is wet ? Yes, because I can see specular reflection from a thin layer of water if it is. That layer may be 100 microns thick; seeing it doesn't mean that I know where I am, or where my car is, or the relative distance between us, to anything like 100 microns.

    The LRO has a multi-beam altimeter, with fiber optics to send out 5 shots simultaneously from each laser pulse - see Dave Smith's LEAG presentation, page 6. Each spot is 5 meters across (actually, less now as the orbit has been lowered); with 5 spots they can get the local slope and estimate the terrain roughness per shot. They estimate that they can get 10 cm height accuracy with these multiple beams, when the local slope is less than 3 degrees.