Yes, the Moon Did Look Really Big

"Spectacular 'Supermoon' Wows Skywatchers Around the World"
Tariq Malik, SPACE.com Managing Editor, SPACE.com (May 6, 2012)

"The biggest full moon of the year, a so-called "supermoon," rose into the night sky Saturday to the delight of skywatchers around the world, who captured the lunar sight in dazzling amateur astronomy photos.

"Because of a fluke of orbital timing, the full moon of May peaked late Saturday just as the moon was passing its perigee, the closest point to Earth of its orbit. The result was the biggest full moon of the year, which NASA and other scientists nicknamed the supermoon of 2012.

"In Amman, Jordan, the bright moon amazed skywatcher Carra Almond of Canton, N.C., who is currently living in Jordan with her husband. Almond said the moon was a captivating sight from her apartment balcony. Her photo shows a crystal clear moon shining bright against a black night sky. [Supermoon 2012 Photos from Around the World]..."


(Imelda Joson and Edwin Aguirre, via SPACE.com, used w/o permission)
"Veteran astrophotographers Imelda Joson and Edwin Aguirre captured this view of the supermoon of 2012, the full moon of May, on May 5, 2012, from Woburn, Mass."

The Lemming missed the 'supermoon.' Here in central Minnesota, the sky was overcast yesterday. Occasionally the clouds wrung themselves out, and there's a rumor that blue sky was visible around mid-afternoon. Which would have been a really bad time for trying to see that whacking great moon.

Not that the moon really was bigger: Like the SPACE.com article said, it looked bigger because the moon was at its closest approach to Earth in its orbit, right about when it was full.

One of the "Supermoon 2012 Photos from Around the World" caught the Lemming's eye:

"Supermoon 2012 in Manchester, Wash.: Tonya Traylor"

(Tonya Traylor, via SPACE.com, used w/o permission)
"The supermoon of 2012 shines bright in a cloud-spattered sky in this view from skywatcher Tonya Traylor from Manchester, Wash., on May 5, 2012. "

That was a happy coincidence of moon, cloud, camera: and someone ready to capture an image.

One more thing: the "around the world" pictures include an infographic that shows just how much bigger than normal the moon looked. Or would have looked, if the Lemming's home hadn't been under a soggy blanket. Oh, well: at least the tornado missed us. And that's another topic.

Related (sort of) posts:

• "NASA's Six-Legged Roving Lunar Base"
  (August 19, 2010)
• "Farms: On the Moon? Quite Likely"
  (July 29, 2010)
• "A Hole in the Ground! Big Deal? It's on the Moon"
  (January 2, 2010)
• "Blue Moon, Lunacy, the Dark Side of the Moon, and More"
  (January 1, 2010)
• "The Moon, Cheese, Aristotle, and What We've Known"
  (October 5, 2009)

3-D Printer in Space: Seems to Make Sense

"Print Your Own Space Station — in Orbit"
Mike Wall, Space.com (November 11, 2010)

"Why build space station parts in factories here on Earth when they're ultimately going to end up in space? And why use a factory at all when you can just crank those parts out with a 3-D printer?

"A new company called Made In Space is posing these questions to the aerospace industry — as well as to potential investors. Made in Space wants to launch 3-D printers into orbit and use them to make parts for spacecraft and space stations, which would be assembled in zero gravity.

"Three-dimensional printers make objects by sequentially depositing thin layers of 'feedstock,' which can be metal, plastic or a variety of other materials.

"Printing out parts in space would save a great deal of time and money, according to Made in Space. And the technology could eventually be transplanted to other worlds such as the moon, where it could help human colonies gain a foothold by printing out robot parts or buildings, piece by piece...."

If this idea - 'printing' complex objects on-site instead of lifting them off Earth - seems familiar, you're either a regular Space.com reader. Or check out the Lemming fairly often. I posted a micro-review of 3-D printing off-Earth, back in April, 2010.

This sort of technology has been around for quite a while: I can't remember when I first ran into coverage of it, but RP (Rapid Prototyping) goes back a fair way. There's an interesting piece about the history of prototyping on the Cornell University website:

• "3-D Printing the History of Mechanisms" (PDF)
  Hod Lipson, Francis C. Moon, Jimmy Hai, Carlo Paventi,
  School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York,
  Journal of Mechanical Design (September, 2005)

Prototype Zone's history of RP puts the start of this technology in the sixties - which agrees with my memory.

The Lemming's guess is that people will be manufacturing some things on Earth for quite a while - but the idea of making large, relatively simple components like pressure vessels on site seems to make very good sense.

Of course, there has to be some sort of material 'on site' to work with. Looks like we'll be using the surface of planets and moons for quite a while.

Related posts, on 'space' business and new technology:

• "Bigelow Aerospace, Private Space Station, International Enterprise"
  (October 20, 2010)
• "Spaceships Launched on Rails: Not-So-New Idea Proposed"
  (September 15, 2010)
• "3-D Printer Making Moon Huts? Same Principle as Log Cabins"
  (April 18, 2010)
• "Programmable Metallization Cell (PMC): One Terabyte of Data in a Little Package"
  (June 20, 2008)

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More:

• "Humanity in Space: The Next Few Decades"

NASA's Six-Legged Roving Lunar Base

"NASA Takes Huge Moon Rover for a Test Drive ... and Dance"
Space.com (August 17, 2010)

"After years on the drawing board and in the lab, NASA's huge All-Terrain, Hex-Limbed, Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (ATHLETE) rover is finally getting a chance to stretch its six legs.

"Engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has put the ATHLETE rover through a series of long-drive tests on the long, dirt roads found adjacent to the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California where ATHLETE was designed and built. They even made a music video in which the bug-like rover appears to dance. [Video of the dancing ATHLETE rover.]

"ATHLETE is a half-scale working prototype of a robot under development to transport habitats and other cargo on the surface of the moon or Mars. The ATHLETE concept is a level cargo deck carried by six wheels, each on the end of a configurable leg...."

So far, ATHLETE's gone for test runs - rolls? - on dirt roads around the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL doesn't have unpaved test terrain bit enough to let ATHLETE go through its paces - and rotations.

There's more testing coming soon:

"...The engineers want to test the moon rover's ability to meet a NASA milestone of traveling at least 25 miles (40 km) over 14 days under its own power. The official demonstration is slated to begin in the Arizona high desert next month...."

The idea with ATHLETE is to develop a lunar base that can travel - driven by astronauts to new locations. That should save time and money in the long run, since a base could be set up once, and then go where it's needed: instead of setting up a new base at each new location.

The Space.com article includes a link to a JPL video on their website. I did a little checking, and the video's on YouTube, too:

"ATHLETE Rover Busts a Move: A Dancing Robot"

JPLnews, YouTube (July 30, 2010)
video, 0:52
[size reduced to fit this blog's format]

"So you think you can dance? The ATHLETE rover thinks it can, too. Under development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, ATHLETE is a 1/2-scale working prototype of a robot for potential use on the moon or Mars. More info and pics of ATHLETE at work at: http://athlete.jpl.nasa.gov/"

The ATHLETE rover is more of a waldo than a robot - a distinction I've mentioned in another post.

Nit-picking on terminology aside, the video's fun - and shows how the rover is designed to climb off its lander.

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More, in this blog:

• "Humanity in Space: The Next Few Decades"

Farms: On the Moon? Quite Likely

"Space Farms Could Mine Minerals From Moon Dirt"
Space.com (July 29, 2010)

"Future manned missions to the moon or Mars could use plants as bio-harvesters to extract valuable elements from the alien soils, researchers say.

"Now they hope to launch new experiments to follow up on tests done with plants and lunar regolith during NASA's Apollo program that landed men on the moon.

"Lunar regolith is a loose mixture of dust, soil, broken rock and other related materials that lie on top of solid bedrock. The Apollo-era research showed that returned lunar samples of the regolith did not have toxins or contain alien life-form contaminants that could threaten plants, animals or humans on Earth...."

Apollo-era research suggested that plants would grow fine in moon soil, and that it was safe for food crops. But there just wasn't enough to do thorough field testing (literally and figuratively) with what we found on Earth's satellite.

One of many things we don't know is what happens to bacteria that plants need to grow, when the microorganisms get together with lunar soil. That may change soon:

"...New experiments don't need to wait for a return trip to the Moon, according to the researchers. They already have plans that would require just a few grams of the hundreds of kilograms of lunar regolith collected by NASA.

"Just one gram of lunar regolith could support the growth of several Arabidopsis plants related to cabbage and radish, Paul pointed out. That model organism represented the first plant to have its genome sequenced, and so would provide a great baseline for lunar biology experiments...."

My guess is that critters from Earth will get along pretty well in the sort of material we find on the Moon: the place isn't that different. Assuming that we can grow crops on the Moon, I think the article's idea of growing crops to supply interplanetary expeditions isn't very far-fetched.

We probably won't be seeing "Moon farmers" soon, though: on-site crop maintenance and harvesting could, in principle, be handled by robots.

As I've written before, this is an exciting time to live in.

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More:

• "Humanity in Space: The Next Few Decades"

Evil Masterminds! Colossal Thefts! Minions and a Photocopier!

"Despicable Me"
IMDB.com (Universal Pictures, 2010)

"...When a criminal mastermind uses a trio of orphan girls as pawns for a grand scheme, he finds himself profoundly changed by the growing love between them...."

" 'Despicable Me' turns Universal into a digital animation film player"
MiamiHerald.com (July 23, 2010)

"For Universal Pictures, all it took was some puny yellow minions to tackle the giants of animation.

"The studio's movie 'Despicable Me,' about a villain who enlists an army of yapping subordinates to assist in his nefarious deeds, racked up $118.4 million in its first 10 days at the box office, granting Universal something that has long eluded it: a family-friendly animated blockbuster.

"Such a windfall represents a turning point for the General Electric Co.-owned studio, which has lagged behind rivals Pixar Animation Studios, DreamWorks Animation and 20th Century Fox's Blue Sky Studios in establishing a foothold in the increasingly popular genre of digitally animated movies...."

I saw "Despicable Me" over the weekend. IMDB.com shows the film's rating as "Rated PG for rude humor and mild action." Fair enough. The humor is rather rude, and the action is mild - although that roller-coaster ride, wearing 3D glasses, was just short of gastrologically unsettling. Moving along.

I agree with the Miami Herald's assessment, that it's "family-friendly" - but that's me, and my family. With well upwards of 6,000,000,000 people around, there's probably someone, somewhere, who's offended, appalled, affronted, or insulted by the movie. What off-duty Minions were doing with the photocopier, for example, will almost certainly set somebody off.

The rest of us, I think, can sit back and enjoy the show. I'd call it "heartwarming:" but first, the term's been overused; and second, with all those flammable chemicals in Gru's lab, somebody might get the wrong idea.

Sort-of-related posts:

• "Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: Reset"
  (June 25, 2010)
• "Killer Tomatoes: How Could I Have Missed This Classic?"
  (May 3, 2010)
• " 'The A-Team' is Back - With Pretty Good Casting"
  (February 8, 2010)
• "The Neutrinos are Coming! 2012 and Hollywood Science"
  (November 16, 2009)
• "Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Noah's Umbrella: What's the Big Idea?"
  (July 28, 2009)

3-D Printer Making Moon Huts? Same Principle as Log Cabins

"3-D Printing Device Could Build Moon Base from Lunar Dust"
Space.com (April 16, 2010)

"Future astronauts might end up living in a moon base created largely from lunar dust and regolith, if a giant 3-D printing device can work on the lunar surface.

"The print-on-demand technology, known as D-Shape, could save on launch and transportation costs for manned missions to the moon. But the concept must first prove itself in exploratory tests funded by the European Space Agency (ESA)

" 'We will make very basic printing trials in a vacuum environment to verify if this is possible,' said Enrico Dini, chairman of Monolite UK Ltd and creator of D-Shape.

"Dini's D-Shape has created full-size sandstone buildings on Earth by using a 3-D printing process similar to how inkjet printers work...."

"This 6-foot-tall (2 meter) gazebo was built with D-shape 3-D printing technology. The monolithic sandstone structure was made of about 200 thin layers and is shown unfinished (left) and after a week of finishing by hand. It was designed to look like a micro-organism called Radiolaria. The structure in the background, overhead, is the printing device. Credit: D-Shape"

Making shelters out of local materials (mostly) is a really old idea. Euro-Americans, including my ancestors, who moved into central North America didn't haul lumber and roofing material with them. The first shelter one of my forebears built was a sod hut, cut into the ground. The insulation was great: but he upgraded to a log cabin pretty quickly.

I don't know if the phrase, 'log cabin on the moon' will catch on, but that's what this article is discussing, essentially.

Technologies for building 3D models through a sort of printing process is new - or not, depending on your point of view:

• "Rapid Prototyping Primer"
  William Palm (May 1998), revised 30 July 2002, Penn State Learning Factory

For me, 1998 is fairly 'recent.' But I think that the upper Pleistocene is 'recent,' too: so you may not want to go by what I say.

D-Shape looks like a fine technology, if you want to make a six-foot gazebo shaped like a Radiolaria. It's probably got other uses, too.

If it works in a vacuum, I'd say that it could make a lot more sense to ship one of those things, with a power supply and the binding material, than it some other methods. That's a big 'if,' of course: which is why the thing's being tested.

Interesting times, these that we live in.

A Hole in the Ground! Big Deal? It's on the Moon

"Hole in the Moon Could Shelter Colonists"
Space.com (December 31, 2009)

"The moon may not be made of Swiss cheese, but it appears to have at least one deep hole, a vertical skylight that could serve as a protective lunar base for future astronauts.

" 'We discovered a vertical hole on the moon,' an international team of scientists recently announced.

"The gaping, dark pit on the near side of the moon is as big as a city block and deep as a modest skyscraper. It is thought to be a collapsed lava tube, created perhaps billions of years ago when the moon was warmer and volcanically active. The moon, overall, is more than 4 billion years old.

"The discovery, detailed in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in October, was made using data from the moon-orbiting Japanese SELENE spacecraft. It was not widely reported at the time, and the journal announced it today. The work was led by Junichi Haruyama of the Japanese Space Agency JAXA...."

According to the article, the hole is "213 feet (65 meters) across with a depth of 262 to 289 feet (80-88 meters)." The working assumption now is that it's a place where the roof of a lava tube collapsed.

Between radiation - particularly when the sun's acting up - and rocks shooting in at odd angles now and again, setting camp at the bottom of a deepish hole seems a bit more attractive than it would in a spot like, say, Yosemite.

A fair-sized base could be set up in that city-block-sized hole. What's exciting about this particular hole in the ground is that features like this aren't one-of-a-kind here on Earth. It's not unreasonable to assume that where there's one hole in the ground on the moon - there are others that haven't been spotted yet.

And maybe lava tubes that'd be a trifle easier to get in and out of than this one apparently would be.

Related post:

• "The Caves of Mars"
  (October 26, 2009)

Blue Moon, Lunacy, the Dark Side of the Moon, and More

"Tonight's Blue Moon: All a Big Mistake"
Space.com (December 31, 2009)

"Revelers can ring in the new year with a cosmic flourish tonight, celebrating the first New Year's Eve blue moon since 1990.

"In truth, tonight's full moon won't be much different than any other full moon. In fact the term "blue moon" as it's used today originates from a writer's mistake.

" 'The "blue moon" is a creature of folklore,' says Philip Hiscock, a folklorist at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. 'It's the second full moon in a calendar month.'

"If there's been a recent volcanic eruption that poured significant ash into the upper atmosphere, it is possible for the moon to take on a blue tint. That's not expected tonight...."

There's more: an explanation of how "blue moon" came to mean what it does now; a discussion of the "dark side" of the moon; a word or two about the moon and behavior (academically speaking, there isn't any); whether the moon is moving away from us (it is); and more. One or two points, I think, are more a matter of quibbling with language - but it's a fun read.

ISS Space Station Walkthrough, Looking Ahead

"International Space Station Tour (Part I)"

NASAtelevision, YouTube (January 21, 2009)
video, 9:44

"Astronaut Mike Fincke takes you on a tour of the International Space Station."

This isn't the most intrinsically exciting video you'll ever see. The camera work and narration is about what you'd expect from a better-than-average video walkthrough of somebody's worksite.

What makes it special is that this particular worksite is about 220 miles above Earth. I've been following the space program for over 50 years, and was fascinated by this look inside the International Space Station. Your experience may vary.

There are three more videos in this 'tour' series.

The next video, illustrating the Constellation vehicles and how they could be used, is a bit heavier on production values:

"Constellation Animation November 2008"

NASAtelevision, YouTube (November 26, 2008)
video, 4:55

Enjoy.More:

• "Humanity in Space: The Next Few Decades"

'I Told You the Moon Was Wet!'

"Controversial New Idea Surfaces on Origin of Moon's Water"
Space.com (October 6, 2009)

"Many experts were shocked by the recent discovery of water on the moon, which was long thought to be bone-dry.

"But not everyone was surprised.

"Astrophysicist Arlin Crotts of Columbia University has been working for years on research that he says predicted this finding. In a paper he submitted recently to the Astrophysical Journal with his graduate student Cameron Hummels, Crotts hypothesizes the existence of widespread water on the lunar surface, and offers an idea for how it got there.

" 'I am predicting something that just happened, that nobody else was predicting,' Crotts said. 'I hope people recognize that this is a true prediction of the spatial distribution of water around the moon.'..."

"...Crott's paper outlining his hypothesis has been submitted to an academic journal, and is in the process of being peer-reviewed before possible publication. Some scientists are waiting to reserve judgment until then...."

Now that water's been found on the moon, there's going to be a scramble to explain how it got there. One of the possibilities is that hydrogen seeps up from the core - or gets blown in as the solar wind - and that oxygen gets involved.

It's going to be interesting, seeing how the research goes.

I trust Crott's peer review is conducted by people who aren't committed to an opposing view, don't have a grudge against him, and aren't afflicted with NIH syndrome (NIH: Not Invented Here: referring to the not-nearly-uncommon-enough feeling by many that they and their little group of confidants are the sole source of good ideas.)

Although 'office politics' is probably part of academic culture for the foreseeable future, I've seen indications that there's a bit more openness to ideas than when I last did time in academia, back in the eighties. And I don't think that 'where water came from on the moon' is quite as subject to ideological screening as some topics might be. I hope not, anyway.

Enough of that.

The article gives a pretty good overview of Crott's - unusual? - idea, and other models that try to explain how water got into moon rocks.

Related posts:

• "The Moon, Cheese, Aristotle, and What We've Known "
  (October 5, 2009)
• "Water, Water Everywhere - Even on the Moon - Again"
  (September 28, 2009)
• "Water, Water Everywhere - Even on the Moon"
  (September 24, 2009)
• "Working on the Moon? Pack a Blanket"
  (May 26, 2009)
• "R & D & Rovers: Back to the Moon and Mars"
  (May 18, 2009)
• "Hordes of Italian Robots on the Moon: It Could Happen"
  (May 14, 2009)
• "Spaceship to the Moon: This One's from India"
  (October 22, 2008)
• "How Planets Formed - Current Ideas"
  (May 18, 2008)
• Touching on peer review:
  • "Tiananmen Square 20th Anniversary: A Losing Battle for Traditional Information Gatekeepers"
    (June 3, 2009)
    Particularly
    • Politically Incorrect Ideas Need Not Apply
  • "DC Gun Ban, Online Censorship, Individual Rights, and Power to the People"
    (June 27, 2008)
    Particularly
    • Computers and the Internet: Now Anybody can Publish and be Heard
  • "No Hope of Nobel Prize for This Lot: U.S. Senators and Global Warming"
    (December 25, 2007)

The Moon, Cheese, Aristotle, and What We've Known

"Our Changing View of the Moon"
Space.com (October 5, 2009)

"The moon, so bright and large in the sky compared to other celestial objects, has captured the attention of humans at least since the dawn of consciousness. Over these eras, mankind's view of the moon has evolved, from the more mystical image of it as a god, to the thought it was covered in seas and vegetation. Most recently, it's been viewed as a dry and dusty wasteland.

"Recent findings of water on the lunar surface could spur yet another shift in the way we see our orbiting companion.

"The moon appears in early art thousands of years ago, showing that early man was as enthralled by its eerie glow as later philosophers and scientists.

"The moon, like the sun and the five planets visible to the naked eye, was wrapped into the mythology of many ancient cultures, and considered a deity by some — to the Egyptians it was Thoth, to the Greeks, Artemis, and to the Hindus, Chandra...."

The idea that there might be water, and other easily-evaporated substances, near the moon's surface made sense: and was taken fairly seriously up until the moon rocks were analyzed. One of the models showed how water, for example, could be chemically bound in the sort of rock the moon seemed to be made of.

Now, going back to the moon with another set of instruments - and about 40 years to think about what to look for - we've found water. The question now is: how much?

I appreciated the way Space.com walks the reader through the last two-dozen (roughly) centuries of serious consideration of what the mooon's like.

"...Since Aristotle, the prevailing school of thought held that the heavens were more perfect than the Earth and therefore all celestial bodies, including the moon, were perfectly smooth spheres...."

There's no question that Aristotle was a smart man. He had a lot on the ball. On the other hand, I wonder if he ever looked, hard, at the moon. With middling-fair vision, it's hard to miss those irregular blotches on the 'perfectly smooth sphere' up in the sky.

It could be a case of love of an attractive idea trumping evidence. Or, maybe Aristotle was near-sighted. Or, something else. Reflections, maybe? A perfectly smooth surface would, presumably, be a pretty good mirror - Never mind what a spherical mirror would do to the image it reflects.

The article has its light side too: including this explanation for 'the moon is made of (green) cheese:

"...No astronomers ever believed the notion that has entered pop culture that the moon is made of green cheese. The phrase comes from an old proverb that makes fun of the overly-credulous, namely those that see the reflection of the moon in the water and think it is a wheel of green (or young) cheese. ..."

There's probably a better, more comprehensive, easier-to-read summary of what we've known about the moon over the millennia - but this is a pretty good one.

Related posts:

• "Water, Water Everywhere - Even on the Moon - Again"
  (September 28, 2009)
• "Water, Water Everywhere - Even on the Moon"
  (September 24, 2009)
• "Working on the Moon? Pack a Blanket"
  (May 26, 2009)
• "R & D & Rovers: Back to the Moon and Mars"
  (May 18, 2009)
• "Hordes of Italian Robots on the Moon: It Could Happen"
  (May 14, 2009)
• "Spaceship to the Moon: This One's from India"
  (October 22, 2008)
• "How Planets Formed - Current Ideas"
  (May 18, 2008)

Water, Water Everywhere - Even on the Moon - Again

"Out There: Water, Water Everywhere"
Space.com (September 28, 2009)

"It's now official that water has been found on the moon, and scientists have long seen it on Mars as well. In fact, water is all over the solar system and the rest of the galaxy – and since water is key to life as we know it, these discoveries raise the hope that we are not in fact alone.

"The inner planets

"Although the moon remains drier than any desert on Earth, new observations from three different spacecraft have uncovered what has been called 'unambiguous evidence' of water across the surface of the moon.

"On Mars, giant cracks were recently found etched across crater basins that hinted at ancient lakes, and liquid water is thought to have been common across a vast region of ancient Mars billions of years ago. Craters recently even revealed that more water ice is buried closer to the red planet's equator than would be expected, 'which implies there was more water in the atmosphere of Mars in the not too distant past,' explained Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program.

"But liquid and frozen water are not limited to Earth's closest neighbors in space.

"Even hellish Venus may once have been lush with oceans...."

The good news is that water seems to be quite common in the cosmos. The bad news is that it's not often in liquid form.

Still, it looks like the moon and Mars may not be quite so inhospitable as they sometimes seemed. Sure, there's no air to speak of on the moon, and the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Mars is too thin to breathe, even if there were free oxygen: but both places have more of the raw materials we need to live than we thought.

The article also makes a brief mention of a life-not-quite-as we-know it possibility.

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Other posts, about "Mars, Mostly."

Related posts, at

• "A Serious Search for Other Worlds, Life, and - Maybe - Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence"

Water, Water Everywhere - Even on the Moon

"It's Official: Water Found on the Moon"
Space.com (September 23, 2009)

"Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called 'unambiguous evidence' of water across the surface of the moon.

"The new findings, detailed in the Sept. 25 issue of the journal Science, come in the wake of further evidence of lunar polar water ice by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and just weeks before the planned lunar impact of NASA's LCROSS satellite, which will hit one of the permanently shadowed craters at the moon's south pole in hope of churning up evidence of water ice deposits in the debris field.

"The moon remains drier than any desert on Earth, but the water is said to exist on the moon in very small quantities. One ton of the top layer of the lunar surface would hold about 32 ounces of water, researchers said...."

"...Combined, the findings show that not only is the moon hydrated, the process that makes it so is a dynamic one that is driven by the daily changes in solar radiation hitting any given spot on the surface...."

"...The various study researchers also suggest that the daily dehydration and rehydration of the trace water across the surface could lead to the migration of hydroxyl and hydrogen towards the poles where it can accumulate in the cold traps of the permanently shadowed regions."

At a one ton surface material / 32 ounces water ratio, I don't see 'mining' water from the moon's surface as a practical idea. However, this article discusses how water molecules probably travel - making the existence of 'cold traps' near the poles a real possibility. There might be tons of relatively concentrated water ice there. Or, not.

There's more to the article: a brief discussion of how water could form from hydrogen atoms hitting the surface, and an overview of recent robotic explorations of the moon.

Aside from the joy of discovery, I'm very interested in this development. It's looking more and more like the raw materials for a long-term settlement on the moon may be there - which would make construction a whole lot cheaper than if everything had to be shipped in.

And then there's Mars.

I don't think we'll have people living permanently on the moon - not any time soon - but a permanent base or three with a rotating staff is a very real possibility.

Besides 'pure' research, there's the matter of mining - but that's enough for one post.

Bugs in Space, Day 2: or, Stop Earthlings Now!

"Astronaut Gloves Tested for Biological Contamination"
Space.com (March 25, 2009)

"Astronauts recently had their gloves swabbed in an early effort to develop planetary protection measures that prevent humans from accidentally contaminating the moon or Mars on future missions.

"The crew of space shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station used a new laboratory device to examine biological material on the gloves of astronauts servicing the space station. Such tests could help NASA understand and plan around how to prevent the spread of Earth life to other planets...."

It's sort of like "The Andromeda Strain" scenario, except in reverse. Instead of dealing with the a superbug from space, NASA is trying to reduce the chances that life on Mars or the moon didn't hitch a ride with astronauts. I think it makes good sense.

There's been a debate, ever since the first moon probes, about who's doing how good a job of sterilizing what. My guess is that it won't be over for years. Decades. Maybe never. Assuming that non-fossilized microbes are found on, say, Mars, and they're anything like what we grow here on Earth, there'll be the niggling suspicion that they arrived in an earlier probe, and adapted.

Unless they're really different, in which case our instruments might not pick them up - or register the critters as weird results that get written off as 'peculiar chemistry' back home. (A University of Giessen researcher has an intriguing explanation for why the Viking life experiment had weird results. Essentially, critters living in a very thin carbon dioxide atmosphere with only traces of water around might not have quite the same metabolism as the ones here at the bottom of Earth's moist nitrogen-oxygen mix. (March 5, 2009))

The article does a pretty good job of discussing how NASA's approaching the 'microbe stowaway' issue.

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Looks like I'm in a rut, doesn't it? Two days in a row, micro-reviewing something about bugs in space: "They Sent Salmonella to the ISS - On Purpose" (August 25, 2009).

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Other posts, about "Mars, Mostly."

Related posts, at

• "A Serious Search for Other Worlds, Life, and - Maybe - Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence"

Walking, Running, the 'Apollo Number' and Lunar Exploration

"How to Maneuver in a Space Suit Using the 'Apollo Number' "
Wired Science (August 14, 2009)

"Next time you're stuck on the moon and running out of oxygen, you'd better run, not walk, back to your lunar module — especially if you're wearing a space suit.

"Scientists say those giant, bulky suits actually make running easier and walking more difficult on the moon. By combing through video and audio recordings from Apollo moonwalks, researchers have devised a mathematical method to explain how space suits affected lunar gait during the Apollo missions, and how future space suits might change the way we get around on Mars.

"'Space suits are effectively reducing the gravity level by supporting part of the weight of everything that's being transported,' said space physiology researcher Christopher Carr of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who co-authored the paper published Wednesday in the journal PLoS ONE. 'When you're out there, it's like wearing a backpack with a bunch of helium balloons attached to it.'..."

Things are different on the Moon. This Wired article is a pretty good overview of what's involved in dealing with 1/6 the force of gravity - in a space suit - with a heavy backpack that acts like it's attached to helium balloons.

Although I'm sure it's important to work out equations for deciding when to stop walking and when to start running on the Moon and, eventually, on Mars: I've got a notion that people 'on the ground' there would be able to figure it out on their own. My guess is that working out the math will be useful for equipment design.

And, the article comes with a video:

"Self-Supporting Space Suit Makes It Hard to Bend"

wired, YouTube (August 14, 2009)
video 0:52

"During this scene from the Apollo 16 mission, astronaut Charles Duke drops a hammer on the lunar surface and has a tough time picking it up. To overcome the self-support of the space suit, he has to jump repeatedly in order to compress the suit's knee joint and pick up the hammer."

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I wrote another micro-review of this article for another post:

• "Like a Backpack With Balloons: the Moon is Unearthly"
  (August 15, 2009)

Working on the Moon? Pack a Blanket

"Giant Moon Blanket Could Protect Astronauts"
Space.com (May 26, 2009)

"Solar flares and powerful cosmic rays can shred DNA and increase cancer risks for future astronauts who might make long-term stays on future moon missions.

"As NASA considers this issue in its plans for a return the moon by 2020, a team of college students has proposed a solution: giant blankets.

"Engineering students at North Carolina State University (NCSU) designed a 'lunar texshield,' a layered blanket made of lightweight polymer material. The outer surface of the shield is a flexible array of solar cells that generate electricity. Underneath, a layer of radiation shielding deflects or absorbs incoming particles, to better protect astronauts in lunar outposts...."

Looks like NASA is serious about getting back to the moon. The article is a pretty good overview of the sort of planning it takes to develop technologies that will help people work on the moon - and be practical enough to carry along.

Earth's Shadow

"Partial Lunar Eclipse: 2008-08-16"
Solar and Lunar Eclipse Image Gallery (August 16, 2008)

"Ever since man's first appearance on this planet, eclipses have been regarded as both mystical and devine [!] with some cultures, for example, associating a lunar eclipse with the imminent arrival of death, war and/or famine. Although the distance of the moon and sun from earth...."

The photo on this page is worth looking at: a multiple-exposure shot of the moon, showing quite a bit of Earth's shadow.

Big Moon Illusion Tomorrow Night

"See a Huge Moon Illusion Wednesday "
Space.com (June 17, 2008)

"As the full moon rises this Wednesday evening, June 18, many people will be fooled into thinking it's unusually large.

"The moon illusion, as it's known, is a trick in our minds that makes the moon seem bigger when it's near the horizon. The effect is most pronounced at full moon. Many people swear it's real, suggesting that perhaps Earth's atmosphere magnifies the moon.

"But it really is all in our minds. The moon is not bigger at the horizon than when overhead...."

The article explains the illusion, with diagrams, and tells how you can test the size of the moon yourself.

Pretty good 'backyard astronomy' information and advice.

"We came in peace for all mankind"

"Flight Day Five: A Man on the Moon " Space.com (June 30, 2005)

An account of the first time that human beings landed on a world other than Earth.

Including how Armstrong pointed a television camera at "... a small, stainless steel plaque on one of the legs of the landing craft. He reads: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the Moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."

Another retrospective on Apollo 11:

"Apollo program: No better example of American ingenuity" American Interests.blog (March 11, 2008)

When Apollo 11 landed, in the summer of 1969, I'd graduated from high school and was getting ready for college. I watched the moon mission's progress on television. After the landing, and the first day's work, I camped out on the couch and kept an eye on Tranquility Base overnight.

There wasn't anything going on: just a live television transmission of a space ship on the moon. I fell asleep several times during the night. Those images are clearer in my memory than anything else from that season.

I hope, when that area is developed (likely enough: it's one of the better launch sites for bulk cargo), I hope that Tranquility Base is preserved as an historic site.

Lunar Eclipse of February 22, 2008

"Astronomy Picture of the Day"
February 22, 2008
"Eclipsed Moonlight" photo with description.