Water in moon ejecta plume (Lcross report 22 Oct.)

[marcus]

They actually did find some small amount of water in the Lcross ejecta plume.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/330/6003/463

Science magazine 22 October. You remember they crashed junk into an everdark crater at the moon's south pole and studied the resulting cloud of debris.

The water is estimated to be roughly 5% more or less, ice grains mixed into the soil, so you might recover one gallon from a wheelbarrowload. It doesn't seem like a lot but it's probably significant.

The sunless southpole crater is very very cold, so it makes sense.

Here's the NYT article about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/science/space/22moon.html

 

[Gaius Baltar]

I also found this quite interesting:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/21oct_lcross2/"

Oct. 21, 2010: Nearly a year after announcing the discovery of water molecules on the moon, scientists have revealed new data uncovered by NASA's Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO—and it's more than just water.

 

[chemisttree]

At our local astronomy club's September meeting, an LRO team member briefed us about all of this stuff. In particular the mercury discovery was very interesting. Interesting because it was predicted by Dr. George W. Reed back in 1999 in a paper titled, http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/11019305/840846986/name/1999M+PS___34__809R.pdf" An interesting read. The concentrations of mercury found were very close to the estimates Dr. Reed predicted in the paper.

An excellent SWAG, don't you think?