ISRO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Brown Univ./USGS

This image taken by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper, an insturment on the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 mission, shows the signature of water (blue) concentrated at the poles. The orange and green represent different minerals.

ISRO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Brown Univ./USGS

  • ISRO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Brown Univ./USGS

(click to enlarge)

Grant Brissey covered everything from hard news and technology, to music, film, and visual arts during his time working for The Stranger. Grant's work has also appeared at Geekwire, and in Billboard,...

12 replies on “Recently in Outer Space”

  1. The orange and green represent hydroxl, which is water stripped of one hydrogen atom. So it’s like dehydrated instant water, just add more hydrogen.

  2. Also, data from another probe, Deep Impact, found that the water on the lunar surface becomes hydroxyl during the lunar day as it’s exposed for long periods to sunlight. it stays concentrated in the colder areas of the moon, with less sunlight.

    From the NY Times article:

    Lori M. Feaga, a research scientist at the University of Maryland who is a member of the team that analyzed the Deep Impact data said this process would work only to about one millimeter into the lunar surface. If correct, that would not give future astronauts much to drink.

    “You would have to scrape the area of a baseball field or a football field to get one quart of water,” she said.

  3. So the blue represents ares where there’s actual “free water” as ice crystals or whatever? Hmm, I thought there was NO free water on the moon, ONLY minerals with OH in ’em (“hydrous minerals” like amphibole & mica), and that the green & orange were areas with anhydrous minerals only (feldspar, pyroxene, olivine). Help me out here.

  5. @3, it’s free water, apparently

    “With our extended spectral range and views over the north pole, we were able to explore the distribution of both water and hydroxyl as a function of temperature, latitude, composition, and time of day,” said Jessica Sunshine of the University of Maryland. Sunshine is Epoxi’s deputy principal investigator and a scientist on the M3 team. “Our analysis unequivocally confirms the presence of these molecules on the moon’s surface and reveals that the entire surface appears to be hydrated during at least some portion of the lunar day.”

    http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/feat…

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