There’s More Water on the Moon than Previously Thought
Article by Kate Sheehy October 26, 2020 (nypost.com)
• NASA scientists have found more water on the Moon, beyond its frigid poles, in the form of “glass beads’’ about the size of a pencil tip in the soil. Said Paul Hertz, NASA’s astrophysics director, “This discovery that water might be distributed across the lunar surface and not limited’’ to ice at the poles, as the space agency thought, raises the possibility that it could be “accessible as a human resource.”
• Enough water was detected in a cubic meter of sunlit soil to fill a 12-ounce bottle, said Casey Honniball of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Honniball believes the water may have come from a combination of hydrogen molecules in solar rings mixed with oxygen in the Moon’s powdery soil. “We think the water is trapped in these glass beads … which protects and preserves [it].’’
• The discovery was made by a Boeing 747SP jet-turned-space laboratory known as SOFIA, or ‘Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy’. SOFIA, is a data-collecting aircraft that has been examining the Moon since 2018. “[N]ow that we know we can do this, we’re planning more flights to do more observation,’’ SOFIA scientist Naseem Rangwala said.
• In 2018, NASA found water in the form of ice around the Moon’s poles. The water ice formed in permanently shadowed craters where temperatures never go above minus 250 degrees. But the newly discovered ice beads have been found in the soil within sunlit areas. Scientists still have to determine what form the newly discovered water is in, how much of it exists and whether it can be extracted.
• Water on the Moon could be used for everything from drinking, to the extraction of oxygen to breath, to the manufacturing of rocket fuel. With enough water to support a Moon base, man could eventually planet-hop around the galaxy. “It’s far easier to travel when you don’t have to carry everything with you for the entire trip,’’ said Jacob Bleacher, head of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA.
• NASA plans to send the first woman along with a man to the lunar surface in 2020 to prepare for putting humans on Mars in the 2030s. Scientists say they will use SOPHIA to search for potential water on other heavenly bodies, too, such as asteroids.
NASA scientists have found more water on the moon than previously thought — a crucial discovery that
could help greatly fuel deep-space exploration, the agency revealed Monday.
The water — which was discovered for the first time in areas outside the moon’s sunless frigid poles — is possibly trapped in “glass beads’’ about the size of a pencil tip in the soil, scientists said at a press conference.
“This discovery that water might be distributed across the lunar surface and not limited’’ to ice at the poles, as the space agency thought, raises the possibility that it could be “accessible as a human resource,’’ said Paul Hertz, NASA’s astrophysics director.
Enough water was detected in a cubic meter of sunlit soil to fill a 12-ounce bottle, said Casey Honniball of NASA’s
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
She said the water may have come from a combination of hydrogen molecules in solar rings mixed with oxygen in the moon’s powdery soil.
“We think the water is trapped in these glass beads … which protects and preserves [it],’’ Honniball said.
The stunning discovery was made by a Boeing 747SP jet-turned-space laboratory known as SOPHIA (sic), the Sratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy.
The data-collecting spacecraft typically tracks stars — but its operators decided to use it to examine the moon starting in 2018.
“It’s incredible that this discovery came out of what was essentially a test, and now that we know we can do this, we’re planning more flights to do more observation,’’ SOFIA scientist Naseem Rangwala said in a statement.
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