Ice Confirmed at the Moon’s Poles and could possibly be ancient.

The image shows the distribution of surface ice at the Moon’s south pole (left) and north pole (right), detected by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument. Blue represents the ice locations, plotted over an image of the lunar surface, where the gray scale corresponds to surface temperature (darker representing colder areas and lighter shades indicating warmer zones). The ice is concentrated at the darkest and coldest locations, in the shadows of craters. This is the first time scientists have directly observed definitive evidence of water ice on the Moon’s surface.
Credits: NASA

In the darkest and coldest parts of its polar regions, a team of scientists has directly observed definitive evidence of water ice on the Moon’s surface. These ice deposits are patchily distributed and could possibly be ancient. At the southern pole, most of the ice is concentrated at lunar craters, while the northern pole’s ice is more widely, but sparsely spread.

A team of scientists, led by Shuai Li of the University of Hawaii and Brown University and including Richard Elphic from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, used data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument to identify three specific signatures that definitively prove there is water ice at the surface of the Moon.

M3, aboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, launched in 2008 by the Indian Space Research Organization, was uniquely equipped to confirm the presence of solid ice on the Moon. It collected data that not only picked up the reflective properties we’d expect from ice, but was able to directly measure the distinctive way its molecules absorb infrared light, so it can differentiate between liquid water or vapor and solid ice.

Most of the newfound water ice lies in the shadows of craters near the poles, where the warmest temperatures never reach above -250 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of the very small tilt of the Moon’s rotation axis, sunlight never reaches these regions.

Previous observations indirectly found possible signs of surface ice at the lunar south pole, but these could have been explained by other phenomena, such as unusually reflective lunar soil.

With enough ice sitting at the surface – within the top few millimeters – water would possibly be accessible as a resource for future expeditions to explore and even stay on the Moon, and potentially easier to access than the water detected beneath the Moon’s surface.

Learning more about this ice, how it got there, and how it interacts with the larger lunar environment will be a key mission focus for NASA and commercial partners, as we endeavor to return to and explore our closest neighbor, the Moon.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on August 20, 2018.

Author: Frank Tavares

Members of the news media interested in learning more about this research should refer to the NASA Ames Media Contacts page to get in touch.

Ice Confirmed at the Moon’s Poles and could possibly be ancient.

Oxygen Found on the Moon Could Provide Answers About Ancient Earth

A Japanese spacecraft has discovered oxygen from Earth on the Moon. Scientists believe they may be able to find additional oxygen samples from billions of years ago, which could answer questions related to our planet's ancient atmosphere.

While researchers have known for years that oxygen can be found on the Moon, a Japanese spacecraft has detected lunar samples of the element with a very interesting origin: Earth.

The discovery was made by the SELENE (Kaguya) spacecraft, and a team led by planetary scientist Kentaro Terada of Osaka University in Japan reported the findings in Nature Astronomy.

Not only does the team believe the discovery could shed light on our planet’s creation billions of years ago, including the state of its early atmosphere, they also have a theory on how Earth’s oxygen made it to the Moon.

For about five days every month, the Moon is shielded from the Sun’s solar winds by Earth’s magnetosphere — a bubble-like region in which Earth’s magnetic field has considerable influence. The researchers believe oxygen ions slowly made their way from the Blue Planet to the Moon during this brief respite and became embedded in the Moon’s loose top layer of soil and rock.

OUR FUTURE WITH THE MOON

Geologic activity on Earth has erased evidence of our ancient atmosphere. However, these oxygen ions on the Moon could remain embedded for billions of years. Therefore, collecting samples of this displaced oxygen could help researchers understand how Earth’s atmosphere has changed over time and how much of an influence these changes had on the evolution of various forms of life.

In addition to helping us understand the Earth’s past, such research could also help us in efforts to colonize space. We do need oxygen to breath, after all, and the Moon seems to be the most likely colonization destination based on the number of plans in the works: Japan aims to put another astronaut on the Moon by 2030, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos believes it’s time for us to permanently settle there, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has its own plans for a Moon colony.

Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield thinks Moon colonization is the most logical next step after putting people in orbit and having them walk on the Moon. “I think if we follow the historically driven pattern, then the Moon would be first [before Mars],” said Hadfield in an interview with New Scientist. “Not just to reaffirm that we can get there, but to show that we can also live there.”

We won’t know for several years whether or not the Moon becomes our first off-world home, but regardless of humanity’s colonization plans, the undeniable truth is that we’re not done learning about our natural satellite just yet.

Oxygen Found on the Moon Could Provide Answers About Ancient Earth