Apparently silver isn’t the only thing Earth’s nearest neighbor harbors upon the surface. Astronomers have discovered another element which could aid lunar settlers in their quest to conquer the Moon.

A new map of the Moon has revealed an abundance of titanium ore that is up to 10 times richer than on Earth, a finding that could one day lead to a lunar mining colony, astronomers said on Friday. [...]

 

“Lunar titanium is mostly found in the mineral ilmenite, a compound containing iron, titanium and oxygen,” they said.

 

“Future miners living and working on the Moon could break down ilmenite to liberate these elements. (Moon Daily)

Aside from the obvious uses of titanium (i.e. planes, rockets, buildings, etc.), the strong light weight element is also the metal of choice for surgical implants (as titanium is able to remain harmlessly within the human body for decades).

Although titanium alone will not convince humanity for the need to settle the Moon, it’s presence (along with the discovery of water and the ability to extract oxygen from lunar soil) will probably add to the case of inhabiting Luna first before our species decides to conquer more ambitious objects (like Mars and Callisto).

(Image: Titanium Crystals, Credit: Heinrich Pniok)

When it comes to planetary destinations within our star system, the two loudest voices within the space community are the Moon first crowd and the Mars Direct group.

While both groups often lay out strong opinions as to why their white or red world should take priority, lunar lovers will rejoice in the fact that a notable billionaire is advocating Earth’s nearest neighbor first, along with another influential figure.

“The moon is the perfect ground to get our feet wet for Mars,” said space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, founder of Bigelow Aerospace, which is aiming to put private space station modules in Earth orbit.

In fact, our chances of making it to Mars could ride on whether we go back to the moon first, proponents say.

“The moon is the only logical first destination,” said William Pomerantz, senior director of space prizes at the X Prize Foundation. “It only makes sense to use the moon as a testing ground and proving ground and staging ground for missions to Mars and other parts of the solar system.” (Space.com)

Other advocates mentioned the Moon as a priority due to not only its proximity (as it’s 3 days away via rockets vs 6 months for Mars), but also due to the enormous amount of rare earth metals within its soil (not to mention silver too), as well as the holy grail of space advocates, helium-3.

The Moon also boasts millions of gallons of ice water, making the cratered barren world livable for future settlers and industrial miners.

Excusing all of these arguments, perhaps the greatest reason for visiting the Moon before Mars can be summed up in one word: cost.

Although Mars is much more aesthetic to the eyes, visiting the red planet is currently beyond the budget of any terrestrial government, which might explain why most space faring nations like China are intent on visiting Earth little sister instead of the distant crimson world.

While humans will eventually visit and conquer the red planet in the future, unless someone has a few hundred billion dollars lying around, it looks like humanity will be greeting Luna first on their quest to conquer the cosmos.

Despite being out shined by its rowdy neighbor to the south, Canada has its own plans of conquering the lunar frontier.

In an attempt to easily navigate upon the cratered surface of the Moon, a Canadian university is developing wheels for their upcoming rover that could enable to country to literally drive almost anywhere off world.

Mechanical Engineering Professor Peter Radziszewski is leading the team as part of an $11.5-million contract awarded by the Canadian Space Agency to Neptec Design Group.

“My students and I are thrilled to be on the Neptec Rover Team (NRT) as it will allow us to advance our earlier prototypes of lunar-friendly wheels and make a significant and innovative contribution to Canada’s space program,” said Radziszewski. [...]

Radziszewski and his team began working on developing wheel prototypes in 2009, one of which – dubbed iRing – is made of an external chainmail “fabric” filled with granular particulate matter; sort of like a metal bean-bag chair shaped like a wheel. This distinctive design provides both flexibility and sturdiness when travelling over extremely bumpy lunar terrain. (Physorg.com)

This wheel sounds even better than the Lunar Tweel being designed by Michelin, as it would enable colonists to quickly traverse across the barren landscape without experiencing massive amounts of whip lash (which isn’t exactly healthy for the neck).

Such technology could also be adapted for rovers upon other worlds (like Callisto and Mars), which would help encourage settlers to explore their new global homes with greater ease.

While it’s great to see Canada contributing to humanities quest to conquer our star system, hopefully the nation will also consider building a human rated rocket launcher of their own (as NASA may not exactly have the funds to ferry Americans and Canadians off world in the future).

Image: The 8-inch iRings wheels demonstrating compliance using a rover testbed Credit: Brad Jones / Neptec Design Group

Despite finding an abundance of water upon Earth’s nearest neighbor, NASA has unveiled that the Moon also contains trace amounts of silver as well.

Another intriguing result was the variety and amount of other substances inside Cabeus.

LCROSS and a sister probe, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), found evidence of all kinds of compounds, including elemental hydrogen, carbon monoxide, ammonia, methane, mercury, calcium, magnesium and silver. And these materials made up a surprisingly large chunk of the crater floor.

“Where we impacted, up to 20 percent was something other than dirt,” Colaprete said. “It was ices, volatiles, light metals. That was a surprise, that you had so much of this material in there.” (Space.com)

While Cabeus’s true wealth lies in the fact that the crater contains an abundance of water, the fact that silver exists on the lunar surface is good news as it gives future settlers a potential means to form their own monetary system apart from Earth.

Although it’s doubtful that we will see a “silver rush” to the Moon (as settling the off white world will cost billions), the valuable metal could aid lunar colonists in the electronics arena as silver is an excellent conductor of electricity.

(Image Credit: Wikipedia)

When it comes to settling our nearest neighbors, both Mars and Luna (aka the Moon) present unique challenges as far as energy goes.

Although one could always import numerous mini-nuclear reactors upon each respective world from Earth (controversy aside), it may make more sense to rely upon the fiery breathe from our Sol star.

Instead of physically rotating a blade attached to a turbine, the proposed satellite would use a charged copper wire to capture electrons zooming away from the sun at several hundred kilometers per second.

According to the team’s calculations, 300 meters (984 feet) of copper wire, attached to a two-meter-wide (6.6-foot-wide) receiver and a 10-meter (32.8-foot) sail, would generate enough power for 1,000 homes.

A satellite with a 1,000-meter (3,280-foot) cable and a sail 8,400 kilometers (5,220 miles) across, placed at roughly the same orbit, would generate one billion billion gigawatts of power.

That’s approximately 100 billion times the power Earth currently uses. (Discovery News)

Although this idea is being proposed for usage upon our home world, it might be easier (not to mention wiser) to adapt it to power future colonies upon the Moon as well as for Mars.

Even though the first explorers of Mars and Luna will use solar power to help keep the lights on, using our Sun’s solar wind could allow us to power cities without having to rely upon nuclear fuel imports from Earth.

Perfecting this technology would allow Lunar settlements to operate during the 2 weeks of darkness while Martian outposts might be able to transform one of their asteroid moons (preferably Deimos) into a gigantic power station that could help power Martian cities every few days.

While it’s skeptical that something like this would be allowed near Earth (due to the environmental consciousness of our global governments), it would make more sense when used for off world colonies upon Luna, Mars and beyond.

(via MSNBC, Image Credit: NASA and the Journal of Geophysical Research – Space Physics)

After helping humanity rediscover over 600 million metric tons of lunar water, India has decided to “open source” its data by releasing it to the public.

“People will have free access to the huge data obtained from our first moon mission on a web portal that will be launched by this year-end,” a senior scientist of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said here.

“The data has been split into two seasons, with the first dealing from November 2008 to February 2009 and the second from March to August 2009. The first season data will be archived by year-end and the second by mid-2011,” said ISRO’s space application centre director B Gopala Krishna. (Moon Daily)

This data will be invaluable to researchers, who will be able to not only pour over ISRO’s findings, but hopefully construct detailed maps of the lunar surface.

India’s generosity will hopefully encourage other nations (like China) to also share their data, which could help foster a spirit of cooperation (instead of competition) in our attempts to conquer the final frontier.

(Image Credit: ISRO)

Mini-SAR map of the Circular Polarization Ratio (CPR) of the north pole of the Moon. Fresh, “normal” craters (red circles) show high values of CPR inside and outside their rims. This is consistent with the distribution of rocks and ejected blocks around fresh impact features, indicating that the high CPR here is surface scattering. The “anomalous” craters (green circles) have high CPR within, but not outside their rims.

After discovering water on the Moon (thanks in part to India’s satellite), it looks like scientists have discovered large quantities of ice water in the lunar north pole.

Using data from a NASA radar that flew aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists have detected ice deposits near the moon’s north pole. NASA’s Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, found more than 40 small craters with water ice. The craters range in size from 1 to 9 miles (2 to15 km) in diameter. Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater, it’s estimated there could be at least 1.3 trillion pounds (600 million metric tons) of water ice. [...]

Numerous craters near the poles of the Moon have interiors that are in permanent sun shadow.  These areas are very cold and water ice is stable there essentially indefinitely.  Fresh craters show high degrees of surface roughness (high CPR) both inside and outside the crater rim, caused by sharp rocks and block fields that are distributed over the entire crater area.  However, Mini-SAR has found craters near the north pole that have high CPR inside, but not outside their rims.  This relation suggests that the high CPR is not caused by roughness, but by some material that is restricted within the interiors of these craters.  We interpret this relation as consistent with water ice present in these craters.  The ice must be relatively pure and at least a couple of meters thick to give this signature. (NASA)

Although it was known for quite some time that the Moon did possess large quantities of water near the north pole, it was unclear as to how much until now.

The large amount of water ice should make it relatively easy for astronauts to establish outposts upon the lunar surface without heavily depending on Earth for water and supplies.

Future settlers can also use the water to make rocket fuel, which will help humanity in their quest to conquer our star system.

Despite the fact that Congress still debating over how we will get to the Moon (or rather whether partnering with the private sector is a good idea), it’s only a matter of time before humanity revisits and settles upon Earth’s nearest neighbor.

(via Universe Today)

(Image Credit: Unknown)

Ever since we discovered water on the Moon, scientists have been trying to figure out how much water is upon the lunar surface, and whether or not there would be enough to sustain not only colonists but perhaps a few rockets as well.

Now it looks like there may be “3 different flavors” of lunar water, which could help decide where future moon bases are established.

(Physorg.com)  ”If you converted those craters’ water into rocket fuel, you’d have enough fuel to launch the equivalent of one space shuttle per day for more than 2000 years. But our observations are just a part of an even more tantalizing story about what’s going on up on the Moon.” [...]

“So far we’ve found three types of moonwater,” says Spudis. “We have Mini-SAR’s thick lenses of nearly pure crater ice, LCROSS’s fluffy mix of ice crystals and dirt, and M-cube’s thin layer that comes and goes all across the surface of the Moon.”

Although this still means that most of Luna is still drier than a terrestrial desert, the fact that many craters contain vast amounts of water ice means that future lunar outposts will become a reality in the near future.

While these “oasis craters” may spark debate about lunar property rights and perhaps some tension amongst the first lunar powers, their presence may signal that humanities first home beyond the sky will be upon our celestial next door neighbor.

Now that China is an official space power, some may wonder how the citizens of this great nation view their countries attempt to land a man (or a woman) on the moon.

Here is a brief video highlighting not only China’s accomplishments, but also views from its citizens (both young and old).

Only time will tell whether China lands a man (or woman) upon the Moon, but hopefully they will not repeat America’s mistake and consider inhabiting upon Earth’s little sister instead of merely visiting her.

(via Spaceports)

Orbiting approximately 1 light second away from Earth, the Moon (also known as Luna) surprised scientists after water ice was discovered upon its surface.

Recently NASA discovered more ice water upon the Moon, painting a picture that Earth’s nearest neighbor is not as dry as we once thought.

(NASA) Using data from a NASA radar that flew aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists have detected ice deposits near the moon’s north pole. NASA’s Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, found more than 40 small craters with water ice. The craters range in size from 1 to 9 miles (2 to15 km) in diameter. Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater, it’s estimated there could be at least 1.3 trillion pounds (600 million metric tons) of water ice.

“The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the moon,” said Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. “The new discoveries show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought.” [...]

“After analyzing the data, our science team determined a strong indication of water ice, a finding which will give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit,” said Jason Crusan, program executive for the Mini-RF Program for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington.

Previously it was assumed that the Moon was extremly dry, and that any water discovered would be heavily mixed with dust, rocks and other chemicals.

Now it seems as if there might be an “abundance” of water upon Luna, which could translate into future colonies upon this barren world.

(NY Times Dr. Spudis, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, said he guessed the water ice in the north polar craters might be 90 percent pure. He said the team was currently analyzing data covering the south pole craters. [...]

In addition to the water near the poles, scientists also reported that a very thin layer of water covers much of the lunar surface. Water, it appears, not only exists, but is also moving around. “The moon is working in a way you didn’t expect,” Dr. Spudis said.

If scientists can locate more craters with large volumes of water ice, humanity may witness the first off world settlements being established within the next 20 years!

Whether those colonies are American (via the private sector) or Chinese has yet to be determined, but either way the Moon is establishing itself as the next stop for humanity (a thought that might not please a few Martian fans).

–Posted on my iPhone