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     Ice may lurk in shadows beyond Moon's poles

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    PostSubject: Ice may lurk in shadows beyond Moon's poles   Ice may lurk in shadows beyond Moon's poles Icon_minitimeMon 01 Oct 2012, 09:09

    Ice may lurk in shadows beyond Moon's poles


    Catalogue of craters uncovers extra sites of interest for rovers.

    28 September 2012


    Ice may lurk in shadows beyond Moon's poles 409950main_image_1538_946-710

    Craters far from the moon's poles may harbour frozen water.
    NASA/JPL/USGS

    Water ice on the moon may be more widespread than
    previously thought. Permanent shadows have been spotted far from the
    lunar poles, expanding the number of sites that would be good candidates
    for exploration by robotic rovers — or even for the locations of lunar
    bases.

    Researchers have known for decades that the Moon's poles
    host craters with lofty rims that shield their floors from sunlight, so
    searches for shadowed areas harbouring water ice have focused on the
    poles1, 2. But over the past few months, researchers have built a catalogue of permanently shadowed regions elsewhere on the Moon.

    The team developed software called LunarShader to simulate
    lighting conditions on the Moon throughout its solar cycles. They fed
    in two topographical models — one from the Japanese spacecraft Kaguya,
    and one from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The software
    identified about 100 craters that should contain permanent shadows,
    located as many as 58 degrees of latitude from the pole in both
    hemispheres, reported team member Joshua Cahill, a space scientist at
    Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel,
    Maryland, at the European Planetary Science Congress in Madrid this
    week. The result is being prepared for publication in Icarus, he said.

    The findings are significant because they open “a much
    larger area where permanent manned stations could be established", says
    Bruce Cutright, a hydrogeologist at the University of Texas at Austin.
    Water ice on the Moon exists in such low concentrations that any mission
    that seeks to study it, or to use it as a resource, will need a
    detailed map of its distribution.

    Ice under ground


    Cahill and his colleagues also took the candidate craters'
    temperature using the LRO's Diviner Lunar Radiometer instrument, to
    determine which sites are most likely to contain ice. The craters are
    only half the temperature of their better-lit surroundings, but they
    still reach an average of 175 kelvin — hot enough to boil water in the
    moon's thin atmosphere — so any water ice must be insulated beneath the
    surface.

    "While not as cold as the permanently shadowed regions
    near the poles, these non-polar areas offer a unique environment that
    may harbour volatiles," says Emerson Speyerer, an engineer at Arizona
    State University in Tempe, who is part of another team that has
    identified persistent shadows at the lunar poles. That team is now
    characterizing other potential permanently shadowed regions using LRO
    data. They made a preliminary report at the March Lunar and Planetary
    Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

    Radar instruments on orbiting spacecraft allow some study
    of the ice, but close-up observations are needed to confirm any
    findings, says Speyerer. Some technological ingenuity will be required
    to allow the solar-powered rovers to operate in the shadowy depths of
    the craters. "A prospecting rover would be able to examine these
    features with the lower half of the rover in shadow, while the upper
    half and solar panel would remain illuminated," says Speyerer.

    Cahill's group has also used LunarShader to identify which
    parts of the permanently shadowed regions would be most accessible to a
    rover. To explore the deepest craters, Cahill imagines rovers or
    landers with solar panels on a mast up to ten metres high, acting like a
    'solar snorkel'.




    Source:-
    http://www.nature.com/news/ice-may-lurk-in-shadows-beyond-moon-s-poles-1.11501
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