The south pole of the Moon is pretty intriguing. There are craters there that are deep enough that sunlight never reaches the bottom, because the Sun is always very low in the sky.
This has inspired some scientists to wonder if there might be water ice there. Comet impacts on the Moon, for example, could distribute water all over the surface. UV light from the Sun would quickly destroy the water molecules, but not if the sunlight can’t reach it! So it’s speculated there might be ice located at the south pole, deep in the permanent lunar antarctic shadow. Different observations have looked for it, but nothing conclusive has been found. People are eager to find it because finding water on the Moon could make it a lot easier for future colonists; hauling water up there is pretty tough. Water is heavy.
To aid future explorers, NASA has released the highest resolution radar images of the lunar south pole yet obtained. From this, they have been able to determine the topology of the surface there; that is, get accurate heights and depths of crater walls and crater floors. From that, and knowing the Sun’s elevation over the pole, they have been able to make this totally awesome video [edited to add, link now fixed] showing what shadows and illumination look like there over the course of a lunar day, a little over 29 days long.
Cool, huh? Now play it again, and watch the craters near the bottom of the frame. See how the floors of some of them are dark all day long? That’s where the Sun don’t shine, as they say, and where there might — might — be ice. No one knows for sure if it’s there or not. But aided with maps like this, future missions planned that will make better maps, and, of course, human exploration of the lunar surface, we’ll find out.
February 27th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Video no longer available
February 27th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Phil:
The YouTube link doesn’t work. Something about it being no longer available…
Bummer, sounded like a cool clip.
Rich
February 27th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Nuts- uploaded it as private at first so it didn’t step on the previous post with the massive star simulation. It’s fixed now. Sorry about that!
February 27th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Let’s stick an SUV driver down there and warn him that it may be icy. If he still insists on driving at 60 mph, and then looks bewildered when he ends up upside down in the median strip, then there’s definitely ice down there.
February 27th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
LOL@Lugosi. Tell me about it.
February 27th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Hasn’t this idea also been applied to Mercury’s poles? If nothing else, it could make a great way to store energy for a polar lander or station; The station could be put in the permashadow of the crater, protecting it from solar radiation. Water for biological use would be available, but also, a solar array in constant sunlight could be set up to provide power to the station and excess electricity could be used to electrolyze the water, making hydrogen and oxygen that could be used for fuel, and breathing (in the case of oxygen). It’s like Clarke just crapped a rainbow in my brain! Thanks, BA!
February 27th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
It would be great news for sure. As a related video I found this how real and possible is that, because if it is, we should have no problem getting a lunar base fully operational within a couple of decades. Any inside info about this?
February 27th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I’m sorry, just in case you don’t want to see the whole video (10 mins) I’m talking about turning lunar dust into drinkable water and oxygen. Possible?
February 27th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Does the Moon’s axis wobble like Earth’s does?
That would mean that some of the craters that have permanently dark bottoms now, might not have in the past, wouldn’t it?
February 28th, 2008 at 4:16 am
To BaldApe:
The Moon’s rotation axis is slightly tilted at about 1.5 deg to the plane of its orbit around the Earth. But as this orbital plane is also tilted at about 5 deg from the ecliptic, the end result is that both polar regions throughout the moon’s orbit kind of ‘nods’ (at the Earth, but also more importantly at the Sun). Thus, some areas that were in shade can later, throughout the moon’s orbit, come into light. However, while this ‘nodding’ does occur, some craters (and portions of craters)never see any light at all, and it’s these that ‘might’ hold the water-ice deposits or different kinds of ice, for example, iced water, CO2 water, ammonia water, ice of other molecules, solar hydrogen (from the solar wind) concentrations…etc.
John – http://www.moonposter.ie
Moon News: http://www.moonposter.ie/news.htm
February 28th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Sh!fty posts:
[[I’m sorry, just in case you don’t want to see the whole video (10 mins) I’m talking about turning lunar dust into drinkable water and oxygen. Possible?]]
Only if the dust in question is made out of water. Dust is generally a silicate, and there’s no hydrogen in quartz, though I think there might be oxygen. I’d have to look up the formula…
February 28th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Barton: Most of the surface rock, as I recall, is SiO2, so there’s plenty of O2 locked up in those rocks. As far as H2 is concerned, I have no idea if there were any hydrates in the returned samples, though I expect if there were we would have had a lot of excitement in the media. H2 could be present as hydrides, I’d guess, bound to various metals.
We just need to have a more through analyses of the lunar surface. It’s close enough, we should be able to land a really BIG rover type lab there and teleoperate it from earth,,,
GAry 7
February 28th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Gary
Don’t know about the SiO2 abundance deposits there in the South Pole region – especially around the South Pole Aitkin Basin (the largest impact basin in the Solar System measuring some 2500 km wide and 13 km deep). The impact was so large in fact that it may have touched the moon’s early mantle. As a consequence, the basin’s interior contains more FeO (Ferrous Oxide) and TiO2 (Titanum Dioxide) depostis than lunar highlands typically have. Thus, there’s a resource of oxygen of form that can be tapped into, I suppose.
John — http://www.moonposter.ie
Moon News: http://www.moonposter.ie/news.htm
February 28th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
[...] telephone number to: River Club Competition, Rita Gillen, Surrey Comet, …www.ealingtimes.co.ukNASA takes a peek at the Moon??s pole The south pole of the Moon is pretty intriguing. There are craters there that are deep enough that [...]
February 28th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Lunar rocks are famous for having no structural water. So minerals like mica, which incorporate water into their crystal lattices, are not found on the moon. Also, the volcanic glass on the moon is anhydrous, which may explain why it is still glass after billions of years. (here on Earth, glass devitrifies in less than a million years).
Here’s an Apollo 12 Mare basalt (low Ti) composition for y’all, presented as oxide weight percent:
SiO2 43.6%
TiO2 2.6%
Al2O3 7.9%
FeO 21.7%
MgO 14.9%
CaO 8.3%
Na2O 0.23%
Cr2O3 1%
My question for all you astronomers is this:
When in the Earth’s history did the moon migrate from being in an equatorial orbit to being in a zodiacal one?
Obviously, the more recent this change, the less ice we expect to find.
March 1st, 2008 at 12:54 pm
I’m just a novice to the internet and only an amateur space buff, so forgive any ignorance I display. One-sixth gravity of Earth is STILL gravity. Wouldn’t any liquid water, however briefly it existed in a liquid state, seep downward into lunar soil, into crevices and cracks in the crust, and be UNDER the surface? ‘Water seeks its own level’ under gravity…namely DOWNWARD…right? So maybe on the Moon and Mars, etc. we’d simply need to drill WELLS, like we do on Earth? Like, say a Comet delivers water-ice to the Moon…during the smash and vaporization, boiling in the sunlight, condensation of vapor in the darkness and shadows, or whatever occurs during such an event, SOME water seeps underground…where sunlight doesn’t affect it. Wouldn’t that be more logical than hoping to find ice in the bottom of an OPEN crater? Wouldn’t ice in OPEN craters sublimate into a vapor? Like my vanishing ice-cubes in the fridge? Or does sublimation only occur in an atmosphere? Anyways, I suspect the reason water is so ELUSIVE to find on Moon and Mars is because it’s underground. What say you guys?
March 1st, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Perseus,
Water can only be liquid under pressure- in the vacuum of space, it is either solid (ice) or gaseous.
Here on Earth, the atmospheric pressure gives water a 100 degree window in which it is stable.
Because the moon has no atmosphere, water can only be solid or liquid there.
Also, because the moon has weak gravity, gaseous water will escape its gravity, just like helium gas can escape from Earth’s gravity. So ice that evaporates during the lunar day will be lost to space.
Thus the only lunar conditions where water is predicted to be stable are in areas that are in permanent shadow, where the ice will not evaporate.
March 2nd, 2008 at 4:42 pm
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