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No dust plume from Lunar Prospecter
Calmacil writes "Lunar Prospector hit the moon, and made no dust plume. Thus, no water was found :( "Darnit, there goes my moon base.
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Cute. But you could at least include one link. How about something about the monoliths or 2001 concepts or 2001 in Clarke's works or mention that the book explains a lot of things which a narrator in the movie would have mentioned.
Here's a blurb...
And if water was discovered on the moon what we do with it? Bring it back, bottle it and sell it for $2000/pint?, Designer Vodka? A lunar ice sculpture for Bill Gates's daughter's wedding?
There's a manned mars mission at http://www.ungabunga.com
Well, let's see:
The Prospector was going to crash anyway, so crashing it cost $0 extra.
They already had to pay these people to do be there monitoring the data Prospector was sending back. Extra cost: $0
I'm willing to bet they were already going to be analyzing the effects of the crash. Extra Cost: $0 If not, then it probably cost them about an extra $100,000. $100,000 extra on a $26,000,000 project is pretty much nothing.
FUCK YOU!
Water == H2O
2parts rocket fuel, and one part rocket fuel.
Any questions?
Oh, that's just utter nonsense. People who complain about the cost of NASA are simply displaying their complete ignorance of the US Federal Budget, of which NASA comprises far less than 1%. NASA's total funding for a year is about the same as ONE stealth bomber.
You want to "improve the US"? Find someplace to cut *real* money, not the microscopic amount of chump change that gets spent on useful things like NASA.
People who go around whining about their delusions that NASA costs a lot are simply uneducated morons.
yea but they also named the second one TMA2 and that was no way near the moon ;)
The moon is a cinder? nothing there?
Ohh you are mistaken my friend...
Where else can you rain nuclear hell on all nations of the earth without having to suffer the concequences??
The moon? A perfect military location to destroy mankind!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Oh poo just what the world needs another chernobal.
You see, it isn't the way it works with the government. They can't make a list saying "Okay, we'll do this, then this, then this." So it isn't feasable to do our priorities first (read carefully). If we did do our priorities first, we would never do anything else because you can't really get done with the priorities.
So what they do instead, because they are pretty smart, is do more than one thing at the same time. Even though we are making missions to the moon, we are also lessening the budget, getting people off welfare, feeding the hungary, and causing international crisises (toungue and cheek, not serious, really!).
So saying that we shouldn't do stuff in space because we have better things to do is nonsense because we are doing the better things too.
If you are familiar with logic then think logical AND instead of logical OR.
Kevin Holmes
"extrasolar"
(didn't log in for some reason)
Even if there is no water found, the only thing that is proven is that there is no water in that particular crater. It's like landing a craft in the middle of the Sahara Desert and saying there are no trees on Earth.
What we should do is send people back. Better than robots - which usually raise more questions than they answer - people can go back out and do some more research.
This time though lets make it worth the trip. Lets put the scientists up there intead of the test pilots. Considering that the last time out of 12 men...the last man to step onto the moon was a qualified geologist...
If you had been able to build your moonbase, would it have been an evil moonbase?
--
ObDisclaimer: Yes, I work for MS. No, this does not represent the opinions of my employer.
Well, yes, the existance of water on the moon already would be an enormous benefit because that would considerably cut down both the cost of transporting materials, and also the complete dependence of any lunar base on the Earth.
Actually, wouldn't the result with the biggest visible plume be if the spacecraft missed the cater altogether?
The crater depth is about 5km.. If the craft crashed right into the bottom, then the visible pume wouln't be as big, and most of the pume would be contined in the crater..
No, it wasn't the biodome. The people in the biodome stayed in for a year or more IIRC, and were later found to have had outside help in that time. The NASA project kept a 4 person team completely self contained for 3 months; it is actually a proof of concept for a manned Mars mission (if they ever raise that kind of money).
Who let Bill Gates in?
Perhaps they should hurl that modeul they recovered from the ocean (the Grissom one) at Redmond and study the plume that wafts up.
Indeed. A great deal of scientific advancement would be yielded from such a blow. "Examining Redmond for Signs of Intelligent Life"
Insert mind here.
Now who's gonna clean up the mess? :)
Bowie
PROPAGANDA
Bowie J. Poag
Money well spent.
No dust plume is good. It did not hit the crater wall. 21 observatories are analyzing their photos/instruments to figure out if water vapor is there.
At least NASA is recycling unused materials from previous missions that wouldn't have been used otherwise. Perhaps they should hurl that module they recovered from the ocean (the Grissom one) at Redmond and study the plume that wafts up.
There was no dust plume because of the specific place of impact, but that doesn't mean there is no water in there...
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
Would water really be an essential resource if
...
one wants to build a station on the moon? If
you want to do something useful there you would
have to build large transport capacities anyway.
With enough energy it should be possible to
recycle the water by distillation or electrolyses.
To get enough food to the moon should be more
difficult then to substitute the water losses.
In the first place you need a lot of money and
that seems to be the main reason for these
spectacular experiments
Don't give up on that moonbase just yet, Hemos. Check out the info on the Artemis Project web site. They intend to establish a permanent moonbase within the next several years, and start commercial tourist flights soon thereafter. All totally private, no government involvement. Where is the money coming from? To quote their FAQ, "shameless commercialism"! They have a pretty convincing business plan, that results in ordinary slobs like me being able to take a vacation on the moon within my lifetime. They need skills of all sorts, so go see 'em.
Nasa recently conducted an experiment where a team of astronauts had to become entirely self sufficient in their enclosed, Earth based station. They were able to recycle their waste and convert it to water. They were also able to use plants to make food and convert CO2 to Oxygen.
NASA wouldn't want to file the Environmental Impact Statement on that one...whole lotta' methane & bovine fecal coliform bacteria...
Try this one if accessing the NY Times Website because of a Slashdot article:
login: slashdotid
password: slashdot
That's why there's no dust plume. We should all rejoice. The cheese ain't dusty!
-AC
There might be water, fertilizer, or even horses on the moon; you never know. But the burden on proof lies on the proposer. It is more prudent, I believe, to assume that something does not exist until we have good reasons to showing that we were wrong.
Although I suppose with 1/6 gravity there might be to high a drowning risk to have a shower.
I did have hopes for regular toilets
I believe the figures that Mr. Bennett cited were the returns from the first Star Trek movie. They were, what--forty million? A hundred and forty? I don't recall. But they were more than the Pioneer and Voyager space probe programs (not Apollo) cost in their entirety--spacecraft, launches, ground operations for twenty years, etc. Which got some folks to thinking whether you could fund a moon base by making a movie about trying to get there. I believe that was one of the prime foundations of Artemis, and entertainment revenues still make up a large part of their initial funding. Those living in Los Angeles usually are aware firsthand of what big business entertainment really is; others may be, but often only peripherally.
I'm glad it didn't work, because if it did, Al Gore would have taken credit for inventing the moon.
But seriously, I was hoping for a moonbase too... I guess I'll have to bring some bottled water or something... And I would need plenty of it for my moon-penguins..... muahaha
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
A basic proof of science:
/. buyout was for.
Just because one test is negative, does not prove the negative to the theory.
The only way to 'prove' it would be to go over every meter of the moon, and dig it up. This will not happen anytime soon.
What is more shocking however, is the revelation of the amount of money the
If Hermos has enough money for a moon base, we can ball-park how much money he got. And, knowing the cost of a moon-base with earth-water....we know how much it was not for.
Does he mention that the dazzle patterns that set our species on the track to civilization were merely the screen saver? We missed the intended message.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Well, right now, we just don't know, one way or the other. if there is *a good reason* why there might be watter on the moon, the we should look. If someone just randomly said "there might be watter on the moon" with no resonable theory, it would be diffrent.
I *cannot* think of a good analagy right now, damn.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
an imporntant thing to remember is, you can't *actualy* use watter for fule. when you burn hydrogen, you create water. If you got that hydrogen from pure water to begin with, it means that at some point, you needed to crack that water into hydrogen and oxegen. The amount of energy that you get out will always be less then you put in. No matter what. I don't know why they are saying that they could use this water as fuel, unless NASA knows how to beat the second law of thermodynamics....
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Of course it didn't break the monolith. It is the monolith.
You see, in the event of a nuclear holocaust, only the moon is safe storage...where else can we preserve humanity's knowledge for the species that succeeds us?
The rocks brought back buy the Apollo missions
showed that there is water. When you crush a moon
rock then heat it, you will get aprox. 1 ml of water for 1 kilo of rock. So 1000 kilograms(1 metric ton) of lunar regolith will yeild 1 liter
of water. Thats not very much but it is there.
a few ounces of human ashes is not going to "contaminate" the whole moon. and anything that you could find out from one chunk of moon, you could ether find out from another, or isn't really worth knowing
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Atleast there are not monkeys on the moon to play with the monolith (grin)
It's similar in approach to the Artemis Project, but at last hearing, wasn't a commercial venture. Still, I'd pony up cash for pay-per-view of a manned Mars landing, and I'd bet a lot of fellow geeks would as well...
ummmmm, just because there is no atmosphere doesnt mean something smashing into the moon wouldnt kick up dirt. the lunar landers kicked up dust when they landed.
Eugene Shoemaker ashes and DNS are shot beneath the surface of the moon, where they come in contact with some water, and are left to evolve
into some new micro-organism, thousands of years from now, or sooner. It can be creepy....
Don't give up yet! For those who have been following this story, you'll note that while amateur astronomers were asked to go out in droves just in case, neither the amateurs nor the professionals were ever expecting a visible plume. They were, however, expecting to obtain spectometric readings to detect water. Thus, a determination of whether water was found or not will not be possible for days or even weeks.
Of course, if no water is detected, this is still not proof that there is no water on the moon - only that there is no water at the crash site, or at least not a detectable quantity. Don't give up hope on that moonbase yet Hemos!
yes you can recycle water. as you can with all chemicals. the reason water is essential is because you need it to make food. for example:
you could bring up lots of food and water---> that would cost alot.
there is a dollar amount placed on every unit of mass(lbs or kg) drug up to space. i don't recall what it is, but i do remember that it was very expensive.
water has a mass of 1kg per liter. for every liter of water they find on the moon, they save that much money
plus if they find enought water on the moon it will make it easier to grow food.
-- john
Comment removed based on user account deletion
how bout occams razor ?
Perhaps we're all the result of a similar burial of an early Martian astronaut ... Makes you think, doesn't it? :-)
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
There have been many different "but.."s posted, and i want to add my own to the list. here are the ones ive seen:
..or anywhere else (someone elses, but a corrollary to mine)
1) Dust cloud would be bad. they wanted a water vapor cloud
2) even if it did make a vapor cloud it will take months to analyze their data properly..
3) (this ones mine) there was only a 10% chance of success for this mission, so just because there was no vapor cloud, doesnt mean there wasn't any water there..
4)
As long as the Artemis project continues to focus on the shuttle, they don't have any significant hope of meeting its low-cost objectives, or even of getting into space at all because of shuttle politics.
Only the alternative reusable launchers (still on the drawing board) offer the kind of cost and independence that a project of this kind requires.
For now, that is. After nanotech, all the rules change.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Are there similar commercial ventures but targetted at Mars?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
...No wonder NASA's getting their budget cut.
These hairbrained, least publishable difference missisons are going to bring NASA down and usher in the era of commercial space exploration (thank god).
Still, with all the posturing to get old former astronaughts back into space (Jon Glenn, N. "I left something up there" A., etc.) and nepotism and inbreed contract awarding that goes on at NASA now, the free government burial in space program kinda' tops it all.
Maybe the human epitat will read :
"Dinasore were killed by something exiting space
"Humans were killed off by trying to enter space"
That would be funny and fitting...
All part of that "let's fsck-up earth so we have to leave it" program.
also, because they found no water, it may help my friend beleive that we made it to space... he beleives that all
this stuff is fake, recorded on earth, that we never made it to space, and if that was true, and they wanted to find
water, they would have, so maybe this will prove to him space travel is real... or he will say it is a conspriacy to
make people think it is real.. who knows.... anyone else feel the way he does?
Before we begin, if your friend doesn't beleive in space travel then he really does have a problem. Space Shuttle Trips etc. are nothing to get excited about so there is no reason to dispute space travel. Lunar landings on the other hand...
The arguments against the lunar landings are many, and at least some of them should cause pause for thought - even if these arguments are not proof of a non-Lunar presence, they have never been satisfactorily explained by NASA or anyone else.
1. Radiation problem - Surrounding the Earth there are belts of radiation, the famous one, the nearest of them all is the Van Allen belt. It starts about 200 miles and extends to 4000 miles (beyond the Earth's Surface.)
Normal space travel, such as Space Shuttle flights never encounter this belt of Radiation because the orbit is too low, but a trip to the moon would certainly involve passing through it. A satellite with a wide orbit periodically passing through this belt recieves in the order of 2500rems of radiation a year (with alluminium shielding of 1/8 inch.)
Now the point is how would a carbon based life form survive such exposures to radiation. Is the sheilding sufficient? (Alluminum Capsule, cloth space suits?)
The other often connected problem, is the effect that radiation would have on the negatives of the still images taken on the Moon.
Whereas the TV footage was broadcast from the Moon to the Earth, the still photos were taken on ordinary Kodak photographic film with an everyday Hasalblad camera. If it was ordinary film, why aren't the images fogged by the radiation?
2. Conflicting Photographic Evidence - We all remember the TV images of Buzz Aldrin coming down the ladder for the first time. The images being taken by Neil Armstrong of course. Now the one thing NASA has explained is that the cameras use to take photos are fastened onto the front of the astronauts space-suits. How is it that the live footage and the still images of the same event totally disagree with one another? In the TV footage Aldrin is viewed from one side, but in the still images, he is viewed from the other. Further in one of the still images, Aldrin sticks his left leg out(!), something which never happened in the TV footage. I repeat, according to NASA both TV and still images represent the same event.
3. Tampered Photos Although this isn't stricly evidence of fakery involving the moon landings themselves, they do point very directly to over-indulgant American patriotism at the very least.
In at least one photo I'm aware of, an Appolo lander is seen to the right of the image. One side is completely black (being in it's own shadow from the Sun.) However, admist this blackness an American flag is clearly visible! (I wish I had the photo handy, but a good book recording the Apollo missions should contain it.)
This topic could go on and on, but I shall restrain myself. A lot of the "evidence" that is wielded is poor IMO. What I have highlighted here is what I consider the main curiosities about the entire Apollo episode, and I would really appreciate an answer from NASA on this one.
Stop Press - If after the first lunar landing, NASA established without a shadow of a doubt that there is no life on the Moon (NASA did stand up and say this by the way), why in subsequent missions did the astronauts have to undergo a quarentine period once they were back on the Earth?
...they forgot there's no atmosphere on the moon.
...and hence no plume!!!
I mean, you would think they would have gone back though their logs to see if anyone else had EVER SEEN A PLUME comming from the moon. Just look at all the friekn creators.... Thousands of things with much more kenetic energy than that silly probe have smashed into the moon over the past 100 years. You'd think SOMEONE would have noticed a PLUME, but nnnnooooo..... You'd think someone at NASA would do some friken research before the some crackpot mission get the O.K.
So smart, yet so stupid at the same time...
Hummm... I smell a POLITICAL misssion...
...and let's throw in a sentimental spinndoctor angle to keep for getting too much heat when we fail...
NASA is the inbreed bastard child of government and industry and need to be put to sleep.
Except that a.) the moon isn't a planet, and b.)
the VxWorks OS powering the Pathfinder crashed on
Mars.
Don't forget about their probe that crashed into Tungusta (sp?) to "search for extralunar dust". Apparently, it didn't show a plume either :)
That new york fucker won't let me in.
Were they looking for that too?
Artemis estimates $1.4 billion for commercial moon trip and points out that computers make engineering much cheaper than in Apollo days.
1.4 billion is 15 Super Bowls. But we're restricting our view here of how much money is available for projects. Just a glance at Yahoo Business News and I see $400 million in one aircraft sale deal.
Actually, yes, the book does mention what the monolith does to the primates.
Maybe there are also monkeys, bug spray and hookers on the moon. If there is water than the monkeys and hookers will have something to drink. But there are no clouds which is good. There is nothing sadder than a wet hooker. The monkeys don't really mind though. The water may be necessary to dilute the bug spray.
It is far too late to avoid contaminating the Moon with Earth bacteria. Things leak off the Earth all the time, and every major thunderstorm currently wandering across the globe is accelerating air, water, and bacteria into the upper atmosphere. Some of that stuff gets blown off and pushed by the solar wind across the Solar system. Of course it gets dried up in the process, but some bacteria and viruses survives that. There's even argument as to whether Earth's first life form originally appeared on Earth or Mars.
å ja!!!! Rosenborg og vif suger så langt inni helvette!!!!!!!
I read somewhere that the last burn was too hot/long. The thing probably hit the wall. If there was water, Prospector flew over it.
We need a source of hydrogen and Oxygen to produce rocket-fuel, generate atmosphere, power generation, etc... carting this up would be a pain in the butt, plus become so expensive that Comrade Clinton would even freak at it.
Oh, dont start dreaming of ion propulsion strong enough to leave a gravity well, that aint gonna happen in the next 100 years, we're gonna have to rely on good old newtons.... Make a long explosion in a closed vessel to propel the projectile foreward... I.E. Hydrogen burning, earth(moon?) shaking, fire breathing rocket engines... Hoo Yaa!
we need it for fuel... that's why if the mars fuel generator dont work we will never.... NEVER... send men to mars...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What if it crashed and sent up a big blue dust cloud of death? Windows, the first OS to crash on another planet.
If you read the CNN article they have a comment from a JPL/NASA scientist who said that the lack of a dust plume is a good thing, because it means they didn't hit the crater wall. They wanted to hit on the bottom of the crater so they could get deep enough into the surface to expose/explode the water into space
According to the article I read, just because there wasn't a dust plume found, doesn't mean that there's no water:
David Morse, a spokesman for the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Ca., which is monitoring the global effort to search for water vapor, called the absence of a visible debris cloud upon impact ``a good sign.''
``Had we hit the lip of the crater or the surface of the moon, then you would expect the debris cloud to be very visible,'' Morse told CNN in a televised interview.
Full article here.
-Richard.
-Richard
Will the conspiracy nuts never stop?
What are you talking about? There are plumes of dust visible from earth due to asteroids hitting the Moon.
Just because YOU havent heard of them doesn't make THEM stupid, just YOU ignorant of the facts. As for having to have an atmosphere for a plume to show up, thats just stupid. Why would you need an atmosphere for particles to get ejected?
i remember reading an article in wired about a year ago abour the Lunar-Mars Life Support Test Project.
from the LMLSTP Phase III home page:
wired article: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.06/mars.html
LMLSTP index page: http://pet.jsc.nasa.gov/lmlstp.html
rh
i remember reading an article in wired about a year ago abour the Lunar-Mars Life Support Test Project.
from the LMLSTP Phase III home page:
wired article: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.06/mars.html
LMLSTP index page: http://pet.jsc.nasa.gov/lmlstp.html
Why the hell is this post labeled ``Informative''?! I mean I can agree with the sentiment (more of less), but if you think that the extra work to put the crash site where they wanted and be watching when it happened cost `exactly $0' then you must be a technology-ignorant pin-head. It certainly doesn't help the cause of science to be telling someone to get their facts straight right after to bable nonsense at them.
If there was water, they wouldn't have to ship it all that way, and a base would be feasible much more rapidly. Especially since that water could be broken down into H and O and used for fuel, which was the main hope for this deposit as I understand it. If you have fuel, you're in good shape. You can always bring your own drinking water, or even just bring the H. Run it past some superheated oxygen-bearing rock, and you have water. But that's not efficient enough for a fuel source.
Communication is only possible between equals
The monolith is in the crater Tycho: hence its name, TMA, or Tycho Magnetic Anomoly. This spacecraft did not land in the crater Tycho.
Thanks.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
as long as in doing this they did not accidentally break the monolith...
WIR SIND BERUMTHER BRANN VON BERGEN...
Or Concrete.
Water + natural pozzelans = cement
My guess is that the lunar dust would make halfway decent cement, since it's probably pretty similar to silica fume and volcanic ash, which both have pretty decent binding properties.
Cement + rock = concrete.
Finding is a hell of a lot better than carting the stuff up there.
The article clearly says that it's too early to come to any conclusions. So why does the summary immediately come to the conclusion that no moon base is possible?
Come on guys, that's just sloppy.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
For crying out loud, it's gonna take teams of researchers months to completely analyze the data... Don't jump to any conclusions yet
As most plans for extracting metals from the moon warm the moondust up, hydrogen is going to be a by-product of lunar industry. Oxygen is also going to be produced as a by-product in huge volumes because most of the ores are oxides - ie. loaded with oxygen. As habitats are built they will generate their own oxygen and water when their metal components are beign smelted!
But why waste it as rocket fuel? There are plenty of minerals on the moon that burn: sodium, aluminium, phosphorous and with a bit of ingenuety these can make quite rocket fuel for use under the lunar 1/6g. Aluminum-burning rockets have already been developed.
Once you're in space, electrostatic or solar thermal engines running off lunar oxygen or simple moondust will provide enough thrust for cargo transfer to and from the moon.
Have a look at Project Artemis on http://www.asi.org for details.
Vik :v) [Can't login as a non-anonymous coward for some reason - vik@asi.org]
According to Sci-Fi, weren't we supposed to have at least two moon bases by now?
Moonbase Alpha Cybrary
And where is my robot maid?
crazy dynamite monkey
Why don't we send Air Force One to impact the moon next? (with passengers, of course).
Even though the mission /may/ not have been a failure, surely the problem is that the media expected a plume, so they will report a failure, so the US public thinks it was a failure.
So NASA doesn't get its budget reinstated?
It sounds like the prefect excuse, to me
Many people at NASA was pretty clear on this. If you run on the material about this experiment you will note that the "unknowns" were quite big:
A: probe cameras had a a very rude resolution to make a good shot over the crater.
B: The topology of the impact zone is almost unknown. Note the it is placed in the shadow region of the crater. You can only "infere" how it would look like by considering the general morphology of such craters.
C: We may suspect about the existence of water in some places. However we don't really know if it is exactly there in that crater.
D: Besides we don't really know how water, if it is there, is laying in the Moon. NASA considers a very specific theory for its existence. It considers comet impacts+permanently shadowed zones+some providence that water didn't return to Cosmos. However the data of the spectrometer suggests that not only the poles possess water. A miserable, but significative, signal of it is shown on the equator. So all this could be wrong. Either because the theory on how water exists is absolutely wrong or because the spectrometer is showing something else.
We need to get people off welfare
Therefore
We need to get the jobs
Problem
The old jobs are disappearing as we now farm out our slave labour
Solution
We need new jobs that provide better quality working conditions and improve the standard of the enviroment.
Problem
How do we create new jobs
Solution
We need new technologies to enable us to change the way we currently work to create more jobs
Solution
We need to invest in technology.
Investing in things that appear unreleated is one of the reasons the US has done so well while the UK just plain sucks. The number of great inventions from people out of the Uk has been huge but no-one invested in them as there was no direct gain. The US went off and invested in the dream and became the world power. Putting a man on the moon gave us smaller computers, the space shuttle gave us better non-stick pans. Change doesn't happen when you do the same old things.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Its time for NASA to start the first interplanetary pub! Its about time...wthen they find whater on the moon.,they only need to get the beer up there.....cheers!!!
Nasa is saying this - Yes the chances are slim, but they will monitor it for a week because they sent it into the wrong place... not like you can really calculate something like a crash landing anywho.
The Moon is 20% oxygen by weight but most is tightly locked in minerals. One which might not be too hard is iron oxide, such as the Apollo 17 orange soil.
There is 10 billion tons of hydrogen in the surface rocks due to volatiles in the solar wind, which is 96 percent hydrogen. I don't know if we could collect H directly from solar wind.
According to CNN, a dust plume was not expected in the first place. The crash site was in a crater 4 km deep, and it was unlikely for the dust to climb that high. Water vapor wasn't found either; however, there is still hope that water exists there, but since I am not a scientist I cannot remember what the man representing NASA said they were looking for (H radiants? it's wrong, someone correct me). Anyway, there is still hope water exists. NASA expects the results in a few weeks.