Lunar cave coords series#

At the time of this recent overflight the Sun was high in the sky (28° incidence angle) helping to bring out subtle differences in surface brightness. The next pass over the Apollo 17 landing site resulted in images with more than two times better resolution than previously acquired. LRO maneuvered into its 50-km mapping orbit on September 15. The advantage of microwaves is that they penetrate and heat the soil from the inside.Īpollo 17 descent stage as seen from the live television camera that broadcast the crew's departure from Taurus Littrow, shortly after lift off. So we can't heat the soil just by shining the sun's rays on it, they would just get reflected. The thermal conductivity of the moon's soil is very low, which was something that the Apollo astronauts found. spoke to Ed Ethridge of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, who has been studying how microwaves could be used to extract water from lunar soil. Water extracted from the lunar soil could be used to sustain life and to generate rocket propellant. This landmark finding was followed by NASA's crashing its LCROSS probe into a crater in the lunar south pole, generating data which is currently being analyzed to determine the extent of water present around the impact site. Last month, scientists confirmed the widespread presence of small amounts of water on the moon. Interview with Ed Ethridge, at MSFC, from a recent NASA Science Express highlighting steadily advancing research with in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). Įxplore the original LROC Featured Image released October 2009, HERE. That field of view can be seen HERE, and considerable processing will be needed to tease more information than what's readily seen from 15 kilometers higher, above.

For example, in orbit 10090 (August 30, 2011), the LRO spacecraft resolved Moore F from 40.6 kilometers, and at nearly the same illumination as seen above. Over time, LROC will image the whole crater allowing scientists to test these hypotheses and come to a clear understanding of how craters of this size form.Ĭloser is not necessarily more informative when sorting though the hundreds of LROC Wide Angle Camera (WAC) observations of Moore F crater. The LROC featured image on October 21 showed an adjacent portion of this same crater. Or, perhaps as the melt cooled and solidified, the volume change opened the cracks.

Lunar cave coords series#

Perhaps the crater floor topography changed over time, fracturing the surface of the central melt pond deposit (right side of picture) and opening a series of parallel, arcuate tension (pull-apart) cracks.