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Tag Archives: Moon
New water for life: Lakes on Jupiter’s moon Europa
Europa lake formation between surface and ocean….Credit: Britney Schmidt, U.of Texas, Austin This story begins with chaotic terrain on a moon of Jupiter, Europa. Ever since the space probe Galileo zipped by this part of the solar system and recorded the most detailed pictures of the surface of Europa, astroscientists have pretty much come to [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged chaotic terrain, Europa, Europa lakes, Galileo, Jupiter, oceans, thick ice, thin ice, water Leave a comment
The Big Splat: New two moon hypothesis
It doesn’t sound very scientific, but some scientists are calling it the “Big Splat.” That refers to the results of a new computer model showing the early Earth having two moons that collided. Planetary scientists Martin Jutzi and Erik Asphaug at the University of Southern California, Santa Cruz (USA) and publishing in the journal Nature [...]
Salt water ocean on Enceladus
It could be called the briny deep, but that might be pushing it a little. Nevertheless, a new study confirming a salty ocean under the icy surface of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, is significant. Further analysis of data from the Cassini space probe led by researchers at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) and the University of [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged Cassini, Enceladus, exogenous life, ocean, salt water, Saturn Leave a comment
Sci-fi Movie Review: Moon
[As usual, this spoiler-laden review is written with the assumption that most people reading it have already seen the movie. Moon is out on DVD and Blu-ray.] To start with a conclusion, Moon is a good science fiction movie that some people will like quite a lot. It’s an ‘indie’ film (an independent), meaning that [...]
Posted in Review Also tagged clone, cloning, District 9, Helium-3, movie review, Sam Rockwell, science fiction Leave a comment
Published results: LCROSS lunar impact reveals scientific treasure
The hypothesis: In the shadows of deep craters that pock the south pole of the Moon there might be ever-frozen water. The experiment: Guide the final stages of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) rocket into one of the craters and crash it into the surface, hopefully sending a plume of dust into [...]
Update 2: More Moon water
Following headlines such as “Moon Has More Water than the Great Lakes” (astrobio.net) you’d think a new study by the Carnegie Institution Geophysical Laboratory (Washington D.C., USA) has the Moon – once considered one of the driest places in the solar system – to be a veritable swimming pool. Granted, more water in various forms [...]
Update: More Moon water
Last year, in a flurry of “NASA Bombs Moon!” stories, the NASA LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) project deliberately crashed into a deeply shadowed crater to kick up dust and test its contents – looking particularly for water. They found it. [SciTechStory: On the Moon or elsewhere follow the water] The quantities found [...]
Posted in News: Space Exploration Also tagged Chandrayaan, craters, exploration, LCROSS, Moon base, NASA, north pole, satellite, water, water-ice Leave a comment
Enceladus has (at least) a sea, possibly life
It’s all but official. New data released from the Cassini spacecraft has confirmed that Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn, has liquid water – as a sea – underneath its exterior layer of ice. The idea of Enceladus having large bodies of liquid water is not new but thanks to Cassini, the evidence is [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged ammonia, Cassini, Enceladus, Europa, Mars, rocky core, Saturn, tiger stripes, Titan, water jets Leave a comment
To the Moon with reservations
The year is 1966. NASA is preparing the Apollo astronauts for a landing on the Moon. No opportunity to have realistic Moon-like experiences is too cumbersome or expensive, so the astronauts are trucked out to the desert near Tuba City in Arizona. They go a batch at a time to bake their spacesuits and wander [...]
The U.S. in space: Moon, out. Commerce, in.
It’s not like the United States is the only game in space. It wasn’t even the only country with a Moon project. China and Russia both made noises about going to the Moon with men (or women). Still, the U.S. was the pioneer on the Moon – the Apollo Project, “One giant step for mankind…”, [...]
Posted in Essay Also tagged Apollo Program, Cassini, Constellation Program, Kepler, NASA, space Leave a comment
On the Moon or elsewhere: Follow the water
In the detective business, the standard advice is: “Follow the money.” In human space exploration, perhaps somewhat similar advice applies: “Follow the water.” This needs debate, however there are some potent arguments in favor of the notion that human (as differentiated from robotic or probe) exploration of space should go where sources of water are [...]
Posted in Impact: Space Exploration Also tagged Enceladus, Europa, hydrogen, Mars, moon water, NEOs, oxygen, rocket fuel, space travel, water, water-ice Leave a comment
In the impact plume: More Moon water
Taking measurements of the impact plume from crashing the used rocket-shell of the LCROSS mission into a crater near the south pole of the Moon, NASA scientists have released the first findings: Yes, there is water on the Moon, and at least in this particular crater, a fair amount of it.
Armstrong: One small step for a man