From: bweimann@exit109.com
Subject: possible water ice on Moon!
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 17:46:36 -0500 (EST)
Hello all,
Isn't the news about the possible ice on the Moon exciting!
Now they should be really motivated to send our guys back up there soon.
I just d/led this article from Reuters at the following URL:
http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/961203/news/stories/moon_2.html
Possible Ice Lake on Moon, Pentagon Says
WASHINGTON (Reuter) - A U.S. military spacecraft has found what appears to
be an ice pond in a
crater of the moon, a discovery that could open the way to a permanent,
rocket-supplied human
space colony, the Pentagon said.
The moon is formed of dry rock and soil but officials say radio beams from a
U.S. missile-defense
satellite have spotted what seems to be a bed of ice roughly the length of
four football fields in the
deepest known crater in the solar system, near the moon's south pole.
"Ice likely makes up part of the moon's surface layer," the Pentagon said in
a fact sheet and
statement issued in advance of a Tuesday news briefing on the finding.
It said the apparent discovery requires further confirmation, however.
"The discovery of ice on the moon has enormous implications for a permanent
human return to the
moon," the statement added. "This hydrogen and oxygen is a prime rocket
fuel, giving the space
program the ability to re-fuel rockets at a lunar 'filling station' and
making transport to and from the
moon more economical.
"Additionally, the water from lunar polar ice and oxygen generated from the
ice could support a
permanent facility or outpost on the moon."
U.S. Apollo spacecraft teams visited the moon in a series missions from July
1969 to December
1972.
Pentagon spokesman Rick Lehner said most of the possible ice appears to be
at the bottom of the
crater in a pond about 400 yards long and an estimated 16 feet to 33 feet deep.
The Pentagon said scientists believe the water for the ice was brought to
the moon by moist
comets that slammed into it over the past four billion years.
It said most of the water evaporated in high daytime temperatures or broke
up into its constituent
oxygen and hydrogen atoms.
But some may have spashed or dripped into the South Pole-Aitken basin, which
is not only the
deepest known crater in the solar system but is largely in permanent
darkness so that the water
would be trapped as ice in temperatures near absolute zero, the Pentagon said.
The South Pole-Aitkin basin is about 1,500 miles in diameter and up to 8
miles deep.
Astronaut Story Musgrave called the find a potentially major breakthrough
during a late-night news
conference from the orbitting space shuttle Columbia.
"Clearly if there is ice and there is water out there, that is a natural
resource which is extraordinarily
important to establishing a permanent thing such as an observatory on the
moon, or some kind of
colony," Musgrave said.
"We need to eventually find the natural resources, (have) a mining community
out there, extract the
oxygen and manufacture the materials we need out there as opposed to
carrying them out there."
The Pentagon said the apparent discovery was made by radio waves bounced
from the spacecraft
Clementine into the crater and back to dish antennas of the Deep Space
Network on Earth.
It said the radio waves could distinguish ice -- at least tentatively --
because rocks and
because rocks and soil scatter
them but the smooth surface of ice bounces them back in a coherent pattern.
The Clementine spacecraft is a $75 million program launched in 1994 that
uses the moon as a
target to test sensors and other devices for a U.S. antimissile missile
defense.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration supplied a team of
scientists to analyze
information from it.
(Darn it all, and I'm too old to be able to go up there and live.<sigh>)
Earlier Related Story at URL
http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/961203/news/stories/moon_1.html
Possible Ice Discovered on Moon - Tue Dec 3 7:26 am
Gee, Geof, maybe you will be able to have a Live from the Moon PTK project,
sooner than expected.
Barb