Apollo Archives

April 19, 2012January 14, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

‘Seeing’ Cosmic Rays in Space

The Apollo Light Flash Moving Emulsion Detector (ALFMED), an experiment to record of incidents cosmic ray particles hitting astronauts. Credit: NASA

Astronauts have long reported the experience of seeing flashes while they are in space, even when their eyes are closed. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin both reported these flashes during the Apollo 11 mission, and similar reports during the Apollo 12 and 13 missions led to subsequent Apollo missions including experiments specifically looking at this strange phenomenon. These experiments involved blindfolding crewmembers and recording their comments during designated observation sessions, and later missions had a special device, the Apollo Light Flash Moving Emulsion Detector (ALFMED), which was worn by the astronauts during dark periods to record of incidents of cosmic ray hits.

It was determined the astronauts were ‘seeing’ cosmic rays zipping through their eyeballs. Cosmic rays are high-energy charged subatomic particles whose origins are not yet known. Fortunately, cosmic rays passing through Earth are usually absorbed by our atmosphere. But astronauts outside the atmosphere can find themselves “seeing things that aren’t there,” wrote current International Space Station astronaut Don Pettit, who told about his experience of seeing these flashes on his blog:

“In space I see things that are not there. Flashes in my eyes, like luminous dancing fairies, give a subtle display of light that is easy to overlook when I’m consumed by normal tasks. But in the dark confines of my sleep station, with the droopy eyelids of pending sleep, I see the flashing fairies. As I drift off, I wonder how many can dance on the head of an orbital pin.”

In a report on the Apollo experiment, astronauts described the types of flashes they saw in three ways: the ‘spot’, the ‘streak’, and the ‘cloud’; and all but one described the flashes as ‘white’ or ‘colorless.’ One crewmember, Apollo 15 Commander David Scott, described one flash as “blue with a white cast, like a blue diamond.”

Pettit described the physics/biology of what takes place:

“When a cosmic ray happens to pass through the retina it causes the rods and cones to fire, and you perceive a flash of light that is really not there. The triggered cells are localized around the spot where the cosmic ray passes, so the flash has some structure. A perpendicular ray appears as a fuzzy dot. A ray at an angle appears as a segmented line. Sometimes the tracks have side branches, giving the impression of an electric spark. The retina functions as a miniature Wilson cloud chamber where the recording of a cosmic ray is displayed by a trail left in its wake.”

Pettit said that the rate or frequency at which these flashes are seen varies with orbital position.

“There is a radiation hot spot in orbit, a place where the flux of cosmic rays is 10 to 100 times greater than the rest of the orbital path. Situated southeast of Argentina, this region (called the South Atlantic Anomaly) extends about halfway across the Atlantic Ocean. As we pass through this region, eye flashes will increase from one or two every 10 minutes to several per minute.

cosmic-ray-streak — A cosmic ray hit on a camera appears as a segmented line in the image. Credit: NASA/Don Pettit..

During the Apollo missions, astronauts saw these flashes after their eyes had become dark-adapted. When it was dark, they reported a flash every 2.9 minutes on average. Only one Apollo crewmember involved in the experiments did not report seeing the phenomenon, Apollo 16’s Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly, who stated that he had poor night vision.

These cosmic rays don’t just hit people, but things in space, too, and sometimes cause problems. Pettit wrote:

“Free from the protection offered by the atmosphere, cosmic rays bombard us within Space Station, penetrating the hull almost as if it was not there. They zap everything inside, causing such mischief as locking up our laptop computers and knocking pixels out of whack in our cameras. The computers recover with a reboot; the cameras suffer permanent damage. After about a year, the images they produce look like they are covered with electronic snow. Cosmic rays contribute most of the radiation dose received by Space Station crews. We have defined lifetime limits, after which you fly a desk for the rest of your career. No one has reached that dose level yet.”

Torso2 — The Phantom Torso experiment, AKA, Fred. Credit: NASA

There are experiments on board the ISS to monitor how much radiation the crew is receiving. One experiment is the Phantom Torso, a mummy-looking mock-up of the human body which determines the distribution of radiation doses inside the human body at various tissues and organs.

There’s also the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment, a particle physics experiment module that is mounted on the ISS. It is designed to search for various types of unusual matter by measuring cosmic rays, and hopefully will also tell us more about the origins of both those crazy flashes seen in space, and also the origins of the Universe.

A tall order!

March 6, 2012December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

Why Are Lunar Shadows So Dark?

A lunar boulder peeks out into the sunlight. (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

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A lunar boulder catches the last edge of the setting sunlight in this image from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. The boulders litter the floor of an unnamed 3.5 km wide (2.17 mile wide) crater located within the much larger crater Lobachevskiy. The smaller crater’s rim casts its shadow along the left side of the image, and raises the question: why are shadows on the Moon so dark?

On Earth, air scatters light and allows objects not in direct sunlight to be still well-lit. This is an effect called Rayleigh scattering, named for the British Nobel-winning physicist Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt.) Rayleigh scattering is the reason why the sky is blue, and (for the most part) why you can still read a magazine perfectly well under an umbrella at the beach.

On the Moon there is no air, no Rayleigh scattering. So shadows are very dark and, where sunlight hits, very bright. Shadowed areas are dramatically murky, like in the LROC image above, yet there’s still some light bouncing around in there — this is due to reflected light from the lunar surface itself.

AS11-40-5869 — Buzz was well-lit by reflected light, even in Eagle's shadow. (NASA/Apollo Image Archive)

Lunar regolith is composed of fine, angular particles of very reflective dust. It tends to reflect light directly back at the source, and will illuminate objects within shadows as well — as seen in Apollo mission photographs. Astronauts within the shadow of the landing modules were still visible, and their suits were well illuminated by reflected light from the lunar surface. Some people have used this as “proof” that the landings were actually filmed on a sound stage under artificial lights, but in reality it’s all due to reflected light.

Here’s a great run-though of the lunar landing photos and how lighting on the Moon works.

So even though air isn’t scattering the sunlight on the Moon, there’s still enough reflection to sneak light into the shadows… but not much. It gets dark — and quickly cold — in there!

And if you’re one of those who likes to get a better look into the shadows, here’s the same image above with the dark areas brightened enough to see details:

Shadow Boulder2 — Shadow world revealed! (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University/J. Major)

Some interesting boulder trails in there!

See this image on Arizona State University’s LROC news page here, and zoom into the full NAC scan here.

February 22, 2012December 24, 2015 by Irene Antonenko

If the Moon Currently has Liquid Magma, Why isn’t it Erupting?

A new look at old data has given scientists more insight into the Moon's core. Credit: Science

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Last year, scientists took another look at the seismic data collected by Apollo era experiments and discovered that the lower mantle of the Moon, the part near the core-mantle boundary, is partially molten (e.g., Apollo Data Retooled to Provide Precise Readings on Moon’s Core, Universe Today, Jan. 6, 2011). Their findings suggest that the lowest 150 km of the mantle contains anywhere from 5 to 30% liquid melt. On the Earth, this would be enough melt for it to separate from the solid, rise up, and erupt at the surface. We know that the Moon had volcanism in the past. So, why is this lunar melt not erupting at the surface today? New experimental studies on simulated lunar samples may provide the answers.

It is suspected that the current lunar magmas are too dense, in comparison to their surrounding rocks, to rise to the surface. Just like oil on water, less dense magmas are buoyant and will percolate up above the solid rock. But, if the magma is too dense, it will stay where it is, or even sink.

Motivated by this possibility, an international team of scientists, led by Mirjam van Kan Parker from the VU University Amsterdam, has been studying the character of lunar magmas. Their findings, which were recently published in the Journal Nature Geoscience, show that lunar magmas have a range of densities that are dependent on their composition.

Ms van Kan Parker and her team squeezed and heated molten samples of magma and then used X-ray absorption techniques to determine the material’s density at a range of pressures and temperatures. Their studies used simulated lunar materials, since lunar samples are considered too valuable for such destructive analysis. Their simulants modelled the composition of Apollo 15 green volcanic glasses (which have a titanium content of 0.23 weight %) and Apollo 14 black volcanic glasses (which have a titanium content of 16.4 weight %).

Samples of these simulants were subjected to pressures up to 1.7 GPa (atmospheric pressure, at the surface of the Earth, is 101 kPa, or 20,000 times less than what was achieved in these experiments). However, pressures in the lunar interior are even greater, exceeding 4.5 GPa. So, computer calculations were conducted to extrapolate from the experimental results.

Apollo 15 green glass beads. Credit: NASA

The combined work shows that, at the temperatures and pressures typically found in the lower lunar mantle, magmas with low titanium contents (Apollo 15 green glasses) have densities that are less than the surrounding solid material. This means they are buoyant, should rise to the surface, and erupt. On the other hand, magmas with high titanium contents (Apollo 14 black glasses) were found to have densities that are about equal to or greater than their surrounding solid material. These would not be expected to rise and erupt.

Since the Moon has no active volcanic activity, the melt currently located at the bottom of the lunar mantle must have a high density. And, Ms van Kan Parker’s results suggest that this melt should be made of high titanium magmas, like those that formed the Apollo 14 black glasses.

This finding is significant, because high titanium magmas are thought to have formed from titanium-rich source rocks. These rocks represent the dregs that were left at the base of the lunar crust, after all the buoyant plagioclase minerals (which make up the crust) had been squeezed upwards in a global magma ocean. Being dense, these titanium-rich rocks would have quickly sunk to the core-mantle boundary in an overturn event. Such an overturn even had been postulated over 15 years ago. Now, these exciting new results provide experimental support for this model.

These dense, titanium-rich rocks are also expected to have a lot of radioactive elements, which tend to get left behind when other elements are preferentially taken up by mineral crystals. The resulting radiogenic heat from the decay of these elements could explain why parts of the lower lunar mantle are still hot enough to be molten. Ms van Kan Parker and her team further speculate that this radiogenic heat could also be helping to keep the lunar core partially melted even today!

Sources:
X-Rays Illuminate the Interior of the Moon, Science Daily, Feb. 19, 2012.
Neutral buoyancy of titanium-rich melts in the deep lunar interior, van Kan Parker et al. Nature Geoscience, Feb. 19, 2012, doi:10.1038/NGEO1402.

February 8, 2012December 24, 2015 by Ken Kremer

China Unveils High Resolution Global Moon Map

China Publishes High Resolution Full Moon map from Chang'e-2 Lunar Orbiter. Chinese scientists assembled a full moon map using images captured by the Chang’e-2 spacecraft with an an unprecedented resolution of 7-meters. Credit: China Space Program

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Chinese scientists have assembled the highest resolution map ever created of the entire Moon and unveiled a series of global Moon images on Monday, Feb. 6.

The composite Lunar maps were created from over 700 individual images captured by China’s Chang’e-2 spacecraft and released by the country’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND), according to reports from the state run Xinhua and CCTV new agencies.

“The map and images are the highest-resolution photos of the entirety of the Moon’s surface to be published thus far,” said Liu Dongkui, deputy chief commander of China’s lunar probe project, reports Xinhua.

Of course there are much higher resolution photos of numerous individual locations on the Moon taken from orbit by the spacecraft of other countries and from the surface by NASA’s Apollo lunar landing astronauts as well as unmanned Russian & American lunar landers and rovers.

China unveils High Resolution Global Moon map from Chang'e-2 Lunar Orbiter
Credit: China Space Program

Chang’e-2 is China’s second lunar probe and achieved orbit around our nearest neighbor in space in October 2010. It was launched on Oct. 1, 2010 and is named after a legendary Chinese moon goddess.

The images were snapped between October 2010 and May 2011 using a charge-coupled device (CCD) stereo camera as the spacecraft flew overhead in a highly elliptical orbit ranging from 15 km to 100 km altitude.

The Chang’e-2 maps have a resolution of 7 meters, which is 17 times greater than from China’s first lunar orbiter; Chang’e-1, launched in 2007.

Global Lunar Map from China’s Chang'e-2 Lunar Orbiter. Credit: China Space Program

In fact the maps are detailed enough that Chinese scientists were able to detect traces of the Apollo landers, said Yan Jun, chief application scientist for China’s lunar exploration project.

Chang’e-2 also captured high resolution photos of the “Sinus Iridum”area , or Bay of Rainbows, where China may land their next Moon mission. The camera had the ability to resolve features as small as 1 meter across at the lowest altitude.

The satellite left lunar orbit in June 2011 and is currently orbiting the moon’s second Lagrange Point (L2), located more than 1.5 million km away from Earth.

Chinese space program officials hope for a 2013 liftoff of the Chang’e-3 lunar rover, on what would be China’s first ever landing on another celestial body. China’s next step beyond the rover may be to attempt a lunar sample return mission in 2017.

Demonstrating the ability to successfully conduct an unmanned lunar landing is a key milestone that must be achieved before China can land astronauts on the Moon, perhaps within the next decade.

NASA’s twin GRAIL spacecraft recently achieved Lunar orbit over the New Year’s weekend. The duo of probes were just renamed as “Ebb and Flow” – the winning entries in an essay naming contest submitted by 4th Grade US students from Bozeman, Montana.

At this time NASA does not have the funding or an approved robotic lunar landing mission, due to severe budget cuts.And even worse NASA cuts will be announced shortly !

Russia hopes to send the Lunar Glob spacecraft to land on the Moon around 2015.

Since the United States has unilaterally scuttled its plans to return American astronauts to the Moon’s surface, it’s very possible that the next flag planted on the Moon by humans will be Chinese.

December 13, 2011December 24, 2015 by Amy Shira Teitel

The Thirty-Ninth Anniversary of the Last Moonwalk

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On December 13, 1972, Apollo 17 Commander Eugene A. Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) Harrison H. “Jack” Schmitt made the final lunar EVA or moonwalk of the final Apollo mission. Theirs was the longest stay on the Moon at just over three days and included over twenty-two hours spent exploring the lunar surface during which they collected over 250 pounds of lunar samples.

To commemorate the thirty-ninth anniversary of this last EVA, NASA posted a picture of Schmitt on the lunar surface as its ‘Image of the Day.’

Apollo 17, the only lunar mission to launch at night. Image Credit: NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org

Apollo 17 launched on a Saturn V rocket on December 7, 1972. Four days later on December 11, Cernan and Schmitt moved into the Lunar Module Challenger and descended to a touchdown in the Taurus-Littrow valley. Command Module Pilot Ron Evans, meanwhile, stayed in orbit aboard the Command Module America.

The Taurus-Littrow valley was chosen as the best landing spot to take advantage of Apollo 17’s capabilities. It was a “J mission,” one designed for extended EVAs that would take the astronauts further from the LM than any previous missions using the Lunar Rover. It was also a geologically interesting area. Here, the astronauts would be able to reach and collect samples from the old lunar highlands as well as relatively young volcanic regions. For this latter goal, Apollo 17’s greatest tool was its LMP, Schmitt.

When NASA began looking for its first group of astronauts in 1959, candidates had to be affiliated with the military, trained engineers, and have logged at least 1,500 hours of flying time in jets. The same basic criteria were applied to the second and third group of astronauts selected in 1962 and 1963 respectively.

Cernan's Apollo 17 lunar suit is currently on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, just one of the 137 million Apollo-era artifacts in the museum's collection. Image Credit: National Air and Space Museum

The fourth group brought a change. In June 1965, six trained scientists joined NASA’s astronaut corps. For this group, PhDs were a necessity and the previous flight hours requirement was dropped. Three of the men selected were physicists, two were physicians, and one, Schmitt, was a trained geologist.

Schmitt had explored the geological possibilities of a a lunar mission as a civilian. Before he joined NASA, he worked with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Center in Flagstaff, Arizona. There he devised training programs designed to teach astronauts enough about geology as well as photographic and telescopic mapping to make their journeys to the Moon as fruitful as possible. He was among the astrogeologists that instructed NASA’s astronauts during their geological field trips.

After joining the astronaut corps, Schmitt spent 53 weeks catching up to his colleagues in flight proficiency. He also spent hundreds of hours learning to fly both the Lunar Module and the Command Module. All the while, he remained an integral part of the astronauts’ lunar geology training, often assisting crews in finding and collecting the right kinds of rocks from a control station in Houston during a lunar mission.

Schmitt’s lunar companion, Gene Cernan, was an Apollo veteran. As the LMP on Apollo 10, he had flown within eight miles of the lunar surface but didn’t have enough fuel — or NASA’s blessing — to actually land. As commander of Apollo 17, he spent more time on the Moon than any other man. As commander, he entered the LM after Schmitt at the end of their final moonwalk. His bootprints remain the most recent human-made mark on the lunar surface.

Source: NASA Image of the Day for December 13, 2011.

Cernan and Schmitt abord the LM Challenger during their Apollo 17 mission. Image Credit: NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org

November 10, 2011December 24, 2015 by Jason Major

How the Moon Became Magnetized

astronauts faced possible radiation dangers on the Moon. — Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison "Jack" Schmitt at Tracy Rock on the lunar surface. If a solar storm had hit the Moon while the astronauts were on the surface exploring, it could have been a disaster. Credit: NASA.

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It’s been a mystery ever since the Apollo astronauts brought back samples of lunar rocks in the early 1970s. Some of the rocks had magnetic properties, especially one collected by geologist Harrison “Jack” Schmitt. But how could this happen? The Moon has no magnetosphere, and most previously accepted theories state that it never did. Yet here we have these moon rocks with undeniable magnetic properties… there was definitely something missing in our understanding of Earth’s satellite.

Now a team of researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz thinks they may have cracked this enigmatic magnetic mystery.

In order for a world to have a magnetic field, it needs to have a molten core. Earth has a multi-layered molten core, in which heat from the interior layer drives motion within the iron-rich outer layer, creating a magnetic field that extends far out into space. Without a magnetosphere Earth would have been left exposed to the solar wind and life as we know it ~~could~~ may never have developed.

Troctolite — Apollo 17 lunar rock sample

Simply put, Earth’s magnetic field is crucial to life… and it can imbue rocks with magnetic properties that are sensitive to the planet-wide field.

But the Moon is much smaller than Earth, and has no molten core, at least not anymore… or so it was once believed. Research of data from the seismic instruments left on the lunar surface during Apollo EVAs recently revealed that the Moon may in fact still have a partially-liquid core, and based on a paper published in the November 10 issue of Nature by Christina Dwyer, a graduate student in Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her co-authors Francis Nimmo at UCSC and David Stevenson at the California Institute of Technology, this small liquid core may once have been able to produce a lunar magnetic field after all.

The Moon orbits on its axis at such a rate that the same side always faces Earth, but it also has a slight wobble in the alignment of its axis (as does Earth.) This wobble is called precession. Precession was stronger due to tidal forces when the Moon was closer to Earth early in its history. Dwyer et al. suggest that the Moon’s precession could have literally “stirred” its liquid core, since the surrounding solid mantle would have moved at a different rate.

This stirring effect – arising from the mechanical motions of the Moon’s rotation and precession, not internal convection – could have created a dynamo effect, resulting in a magnetic field.

This field may have persisted for some time but it couldn’t last forever, the team said. As the Moon gradually moved further away from Earth the precession rate slowed, bringing the stirring process – and the dynamo – to a halt.

“The further out the moon moves, the slower the stirring, and at a certain point the lunar dynamo shuts off,” said Christina Dwyer.

Still, the team’s model provides a basis for how such a dynamo could have existed, possibly for as long as a billion years. This would have been long enough to form rocks that would still exhibit some magnetic properties to this day.

The team admits that more paleomagnetic research is needed to know for sure if their proposed core/mantle interaction would have created the right kind of movements within the liquid core to create a lunar dynamo.

“Only certain types of fluid motions give rise to magnetic dynamos,” Dwyer said. “We calculated the power that’s available to drive the dynamo and the magnetic field strengths that could be generated. But we really need the dynamo experts to take this model to the next level of detail and see if it works.”

In other words, they’re still working towards a theory of lunar magnetism that really sticks.

Read the article by Tim Stephens on the UCSC website.

October 29, 2011December 24, 2015 by Jason Major

Apollo Astronaut Returns “Stolen” Camera

Apollo 14 astronaut Ed Mitchell on the Moon, February 5, 1971. Credit: NASA.

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In a follow-up to a recent Universe Today article, Apollo astronaut and sixth-man-on-the-moon Ed Mitchell has agreed to return a lunar Data Acquisition Camera (DAC) that he kept from the Apollo 14 mission, rather than face a court date next year over a suit filed by NASA in June.

The 16mm camera was “rescued” from the Apollo 14 landing module by Mitchell as it was about to be released from the orbiter after the astronauts’ visit to the Moon in February 1971. The lander – with everything remaining in it – would later crash onto the Moon’s surface.

Not only did Mitchell consider it a waste of a valuable piece of historic equipment, but there was a then-standing policy that astronauts could keep certain items from their missions as mementos.

news-102811a — This Data Acquisition Camera (DAC) was one of two 16mm cameras on the Apollo 14 lunar module "Antares" when it landed on the moon on Feb, 5, 1971. Credit: FLSD

Mitchell had had the DAC until May 2010, when he put it and other items up for auction at New York’s Bonhams auction house as a part of their “Space History Sale”. It was at that time that NASA filed a suit against the 80-year-old Mitchell, claiming that he had no rightful ownership of the camera. Mitchell’s attempt to get the case dismissed was denied by a Florida district court judge earlier this month, who stated that there was no statute or jurisdiction on such cases, being filed by a federally-run organization.

Rather than go to court in October 2012, Mitchell agreed in district court this past Thursday to “relinquish all claims of ownership, legal title, or dominion” over the camera.

Mitchell and the federal prosecutors will each be responsible for their own legal fees.

Read the original Universe Today story here, and for more details see the article on collectSpace.com.

September 19, 2011December 24, 2015 by VirtualAstro

The Mission to Find the Missing Lunar Module

Apollo LM orbiting the sun, Credit: Adrian West http://twitter.com/virtualastro

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Where is the Apollo 10 Lunar lander module? It’s somewhere out there — orbiting the Sun — and there’s a new initiative to try and find it!

The Apollo 10 mission launched on May 18, 1968 and was a manned “dry run” for its successor Apollo 11, testing all of the procedures and components of a Moon landing without actually landing on the Moon itself.

After carrying out a successful lunar orbit and docking procedure, the Lunar Module (called “Snoopy”) was jettisoned and sent into an orbit around the Sun.

After 42 years, it’s believed to still be in a heliocentric orbit and a team of UK and international astronomers working with schools are going to try and find it.

The idea is the brainchild of British amateur astronomer Nick Howes who helped coordinate a very successful asteroid and comet project with schools and Faulkes Telescope during this past summer.

After consulting with people from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other orbital dynamics experts, the Howes has assembled a team of facilities and experts, including the Faulkes Telescope, Space Exploration Engineering Corp, astronomers from the Remanzacco Observatory in Italy and schools across the UK.

They know they have a massive undertaking ahead of them to find Snoopy.

“The key problem which we are taking on is a lack of solid orbital data since 1969,” Howes told Universe Today. “We’ve enlisted the help of the Space Exploration Engineering Corp who have calculated orbits for Apollo 10 and working closely with people who were on the Apollo mission team in the era will help us identify search coordinate regions.”

“We’re expecting a search arc anywhere up to 135 million kilometres in size which is a huge amount of space to look at, ” Howes continued. “We’re aware of the scale and magnitude of this challenge but to have the twin Faulkes scopes assist the hunt, along with schools, plus the fact that we’ll doubtless turn up many new finds such as comets and asteroids makes this a great science project too. We’re also encouraging anyone to have a go as we’ll be posting the coordinates on to the Faulkes Telescope website starting in a few days”

While the challenge ahead of Howes and the team is enormous, and the chances of the team finding Snoopy are very small, the team are enthusing thousands of people with their own “Apollo Mission” – the mission to find the missing Apollo Lunar module.

May 26, 2011December 24, 2015 by Jason Major

Water, Water Everywhere… Lunar Samples Show More Water Than Previously Thought

Orange lunar soil collected by Apollo 17 contains more water than once thought. Credit: NASA.

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A team of NASA-funded researchers led by Carnegie Institution’s Erik Hauri has recently announced the discovery of more water on the Moon, in the form of ancient magma that has been locked up in tiny crystals contained within soil samples collected by Apollo 17 astronauts. The amounts found indicate there may be 100 times more water within lunar magma than previously thought… truly a “watershed” discovery!

Orange-colored lunar soil sampled during Apollo 17 EVA missions was tested using a new ion microprobe instrument which measured the water contained within magma trapped inside lunar crystals, called “melt inclusions”. The inclusions are the result of volcanic eruptions on the Moon that occurred over 3.7 billion years ago.

Because these bits of magma are encased in crystals they were not subject to loss of water or “other volatiles” during the explosive eruption process.

“In contrast to most volcanic deposits, the melt inclusions are encased in crystals that prevent the escape of water and other volatiles during eruption. These samples provide the best window we have to the amount of water in the interior of the Moon.”

– James Van Orman of Case Western Reserve University, team member

While it was previously found that water is contained within lunar magma during a 2008 study led by Alberto Saal of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, this new announcement is based upon the work of Brown undergraduate student Thomas Weinreich, who located the melt inclusions. By measuring the water content of the inclusions, the team could then infer the amount of water present in the Moon’s interior.

The results also make correlations to the proposed origins of the Moon. Currently-accepted models say the Moon was created following a collision between the newly-formed Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet 4.5 billion years ago. Material from the Earth’s outer layers was blasted out into space, forming a ring of molten material that encircled the Earth and eventually coalesced, cooled and became the Moon. This would also mean that the Moon should have similarities in composition to material that would have been found in the outer layers of the Earth at that time.

“The bottom line is that in 2008, we said the primitive water content in the lunar magmas should be similar to lavas coming from the Earth’s depleted upper mantle. Now, we have proven that is indeed the case.”

– Alberto Saal, Brown University, RI

The findings also suggest that the Moon’s water may not just be the result of comet or meteor impacts – as was suggested after the discovery of water ice in polar craters by the LCROSS mission in 2009 – but may also have come from within the Moon itself via ancient lunar eruptions.

The success of this study makes a strong case for finding and returning similar samples of ejected volcanic material from other worlds in our solar system.

“We can conceive of no sample type that would be more important to return to Earth than these volcanic glass samples ejected by explosive volcanism, which have been mapped not only on the Moon but throughout the inner solar system.”

– Erik Hauri, lead author, Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism

The results were published in the May 26 issue of Science Express.

Read the full NASA news release here.

April 19, 2011December 24, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Yuri Gagarin From the Earth to Mars Tribute

The legacy of Yuri Gagarin and Vostok1 honored by Opportunity Mars Rover at Vostok Crater and Gagarin Rock. Photos: Roscosmos/NASA/JPL Poster: Ken Kremer

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50 Years ago, the dream of human spaceflight opened with the courageous blastoff of Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin inside the Vostok 1 spacecraft on April 12, 1961. Gagarin was the first person to orbit the Earth. Less than a month later on May 5. 1961, Astronaut Alan Shepard bravely set forth on America’s first human spaceflight – Freedom 7.

Barely three weeks afterward on May 25, 1961, these momentous events of the early Space Age led directly to Project Apollo and the historic announcement by President Kennedy that the United States “would land a man on the moon” by the end of the 1960’s.

In honor of Yuri Gagarin, NASA’s Opportunity Mars Rover explored a small and highly eroded crater dubbed “Vostok Crater” in 2005 during its journey in the Meridian Planum region on the Martian surface. Along the edge of the crater, researchers commanded Opportunity to use the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT), to drill into a rock dubbed “Gagarin” on Sols 401 and 402 in March 2005.

Yuri Gagarin - first human in space. Credit: Russian Archives

I created the poster collage above as a tribute to the first human spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin and his legacy which eventually led to the exploration of Mars by the Spirit and Opportunity rovers

Opportunity landed on Mars on Jan. 24, 2004 for a planned 90 sol mission. By the time that Opportunity arrived at Vostok Crater, she had already lasted more than 4 times longer than expected and found that water existed on ancient Mars.

Opportunity is still alive today on Sol 2571, more than 28 times beyond its design lifetime !

Opportunity used its rock abrasion tool (RAT) on a rock named "Gagarin" during Sols 401 and 402 on Mars (March 10 and 11, 2005). This false-color image shows the circular mark created where the tool exposed the interior of the rock Gagarin at a target called "Yuri." The circle is about 4.5 centimeters (1.8 inches) in diameter. Gagarin is at the edge of a highly eroded, small crater that was named "Vostok" for the spacecraft that carried Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in the first human spaceflight, on April 12, 1961. This image combines exposures taken through three different filters by Opportunity's panoramic camera on Sol 405 (March 14, 2005). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./ASU

Scientists are using the data gathered from “Gagarin Rock” and other locations explored by Opportunity to help elucidate the history of the past flow of liquid water on the red planet and determine whether the wet environmental conditions could ever have supported martian microbial life – past or present.

“The 50th anniversary of mankind’s first fledgling foray into the cosmos should serve as an important reminder of the spirit of adventure and exploration that has propelled mankind throughout history,” said Mars rover science team member James Rice of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md, in a statement. “We are a species of explorers; it is encoded into our very DNA.”

“Half a century ago Yuri Gagarin was lofted into a totally unknown, remote and hostile environment and in doing so opened up a new limitless frontier of possibilities for mankind,” Rice added. “A mere 23 days later another brave human, Alan Shepard, climbed aboard a rocket and ventured into the starry abyss. Their courage and vision continue to inspire and lead us into the unknown. Hopefully, one day in the not too distant future it will lead humanity on a voyage to Mars.”

Many people, including myself, were inspired by the Space Race to become scientists and engineers and hope that continues for the next generation of students today.

Read more about Yuri Gagarin and Opportunity in my related stories:

Yuri Gagarin and Vostok 1 Photo Album – 50th Anniversary of Human Spaceflight
Countdown to Yuri’s Night and the 50th Anniversary of Human Spaceflight !
Stirring Video Tributes to Yuri Gagarin
Opportunity Rover Completes Exploration of fascinating Santa Maria Crater