LCROSS Impact Data Indicates Water on Moon

The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water.

Secrets the moon has been holding, for perhaps billions of years, are now being revealed to the delight of scientists and space enthusiasts alike.

NASA today opened a new chapter in our understanding of the moon. Preliminary data from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus cater near the moon’s south pole.

The impact created by the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket created a two-part plume of material from the bottom of the crater. The first part was a high angle plume of vapor and fine dust and the second a lower angle ejecta curtain of heavier material. This material has not seen sunlight in billions of years.

"We're unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbor and by extension the solar system. It turns out the moon harbors many secrets, and LCROSS has added a new layer to our understanding," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Scientists have long speculated about the source of vast quantities of hydrogen that have been observed at the lunar poles. The LCROSS findings are shedding new light on the question of water, which could be more widespread and in greater quantity than previously suspected.

Permanently shadowed regions could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data. In addition, water, and other compounds represent potential resources that could sustain future lunar exploration.

NASA to Begin Attempts to Free Sand-Trapped Mars Rover

NASA will begin transmitting commands to its Mars exploration rover Spirit on Monday as part of an escape plan to free the venerable robot from its Martian sand trap.

Spirit has been lodged at a site scientists call "Troy" since April 23. Researchers expect the extraction process to be long and the outcome uncertain based on tests here on Earth this spring that simulated conditions at the Martian site.

"This is going to be a lengthy process, and there's a high probability attempts to free Spirit will not be successful" said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "After the first few weeks of attempts, we're not likely to know whether Spirit will be able to free itself."

Spirit has six wheels for roving the Red Planet. The first commands will tell the rover to rotate its five working wheels forward approximately six turns. Engineers anticipate severe wheel slippage, with barely perceptible forward progress in this initial attempt. Since 2006, Spirit's right-front wheel has been inoperable, possibly because of wear and tear on a motor as a result of the rover's longevity.

Spirit will return data the next day from its first drive attempt. The results will be assessed before engineers develop and send commands for a second attempt. Using results from previous commands, engineers plan to continue escape efforts until early 2010.

"Mobility on Mars is challenging, and whatever the outcome, lessons from the work to free Spirit will enhance our knowledge about how to analyze Martian terrain and drive future Mars rovers," McCuisition said. "Spirit has provided outstanding scientific discoveries and shown us astounding vistas during its long life on Mars, which is more than 22 times longer than its designed life."

In the spring, Spirit was driving backward and dragging the inoperable right front wheel. While driving in April, the rover's other wheels broke through a crust on the surface that was covering a bright-toned, slippery sand underneath. After a few drive attempts to get Spirit out in the subsequent days, it began sinking deeper in the sand trap. Driving was suspended to allow time for tests and reviews of possible escape strategies.

"The investigations of the rover embedding and our preparations to resume driving have been extensive and thorough," said John Callas, project manager for Spirit and Opportunity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We've used two different test rovers here on Earth in conditions designed to simulate as best as possible Spirit's predicament. However, Earth-based tests cannot exactly replicate the conditions at Troy."

Data show Spirit is straddling the edge of a 26-foot-wide crater that had been filled long ago with sulfate-bearing sands produced in a hot water or steam environment. The deposits in the crater formed distinct layers with different compositions and tints, and they are capped by a crusty soil. It is that soil that Spirit's wheels broke through. The buried crater lies mainly to Spirit's left. Engineers have plotted an escape route from Troy that heads up a mild slope away from the crater.

"We'll start by steering the wheels straight and driving, though we may have to steer the wheels to the right to counter any downhill slip to the left," said Ashley Stroupe, a JPL rover driver and Spirit extraction testing coordinator. "Straight-ahead driving is intended to get the rover's center of gravity past a rock that lies underneath Spirit. Gaining horizontal distance without losing too much vertical clearance will be a key to success. The right front wheel's inability to rotate greatly increases the challenge."

Spirit has been examining its Martian surroundings with tools on its robotic arm and its camera mast. The rover's work at Troy has augmented earlier discoveries it made indicating ancient Mars had hot springs or steam vents, possible habitats for life. If escape attempts fail, the rover's stationary location may result in new science findings.

"The soft materials churned up by Spirit's wheels have the highest sulfur content measured on Mars,” said Ray Arvidson a scientist at Washington University in St. Louis and deputy principal investigator for the science payloads on Spirit and Opportunity. “We're taking advantage of its fixed location to conduct detailed measurements of these interesting materials."

Spirit and its twin rover landed on Mars in January 2004. They have explored Mars for five years, far surpassing their original 90-day mission. Opportunity currently is driving toward a large crater called Endeavor.

This Month in Exploration - November

Visit "This Month in Exploration" every month to find out how aviation and space exploration have changed throughout the years, improving life for humans on Earth and in space. While reflecting on the events that led to NASA's formation and its rich history of accomplishments, "This Month in Exploration" will reveal where the agency is leading us -- to the moon, Mars and beyond.

100 Years Ago

November 3, 1909: Lt. George C. Sweet became the first naval officer to fly in the Wright airplane during the military trials of the Wright Flyer at College Park, Md. On the same day, Dr. William H. Greene set a passenger-carrying record at Morris Park, N.Y. A. Leo Stevens, an aviation pioneer in his own right, and two others rode as passengers for short flights in the Greene biplane.

90 Years Ago

November 12, 1919: Ross MacPherson Smith commenced his historic, 11,500-mile intercontinental flight in a British Vickers-Vimy heavy bomber aircraft in Heston, London. He completed the trip at Port Darwin, Australia on December 10, 1919 and was knighted for his efforts.

80 Years Ago

November 28-29, 1929: Commander Richard E. Byrd made the first flight over the South Pole in a Ford trimotor piloted by Bernt Balchen and two American pilots. During this first expedition to Antarctica, Byrd established a base he named Little America that was located on the Bay of Whales.

75 Years Ago

November 18, 1934: The United States Navy issued a contract to the Northrop Corporation for the XBT-1: a two-seat scout and 1,000-pound dive bomber. The aircraft was the first prototype in a sequence that led to the SBD Dauntless series of dive bombers used throughout World War II.

60 Years Ago

November 22, 1949: The Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket, a research plane, exceeded the speed of sound at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. It was powered by both a Westinghouse J-34 turbojet engine and a Reaction Motors rocket motor.

50 Years Ago

November 4, 1959: NASA launched a second LJ-1A rocket (nicknamed Little Joe) from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va. to test the Mercury escape system under severe dynamic pressure. The launch vehicle functioned perfectly, but the escape rocket ignited ten seconds too late.

November 11-22, 1959: The United States contributed 10 rocket firings to an internationally coordinated program of rocket sounds of the upper atmosphere sponsored by the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR).

45 Years Ago

November 28, 1964: NASA launched the Mars explorer Mariner 4 spacecraft at 9:22 a.m. EST from the Eastern Space and Missile Center. The first successful mission to Mars, it encountered the planet on July 14, 1965.

40 Years Ago

November 14, 1969: NASA launched Apollo 12, the second lunar landing mission, at 11:22 a.m. EST from NASA's Kennedy Space Station, Fla. Astronauts Charles Conrad, Jr., Richard F. Gordon, and Alan L. Bean were aboard. The event was witnessed by Richard Nixon, the first U.S. President to attend the launch of a manned space flight.

30 Years Ago

November 21, 1979: The Eastern Space and Missile Center hosted the launch of the U.S. Air Force's Defense Satellites DSCS II-13 and 14.

25 Years Ago

November 8, 1984: NASA launched the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-51A) from Kennedy Space Center at 7:15 a.m. EST. The satellites TELESAT-H (ANIK) and SYNCOM IV-I (also known as LEASAT-1) were deployed, while disabled satellites PALAPA-B2 and WESTAR-VI were retrieved. The mission marked the first retrieval and return of two disabled communications satellites. The mission duration was 7 days, 23 hours, 44 minutes

20 Years Ago

November 18, 1989: NASA launched the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE ) at 6:34 a.m. PST from Vandenberg Air Force Base. This satellite was designed to measure diffuse infrared and microwave radiation from the early universe. COBE determined the temperature of the cosmic microwave background -- essentially the afterglow of the big bang.

15 Years Ago

November 3, 1994: NASA launched Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-66) at 11:59 a.m. EDT from Kennedy Space Center. The primary payload was the Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Sciences - 3 (ATLAS-03), which measured and studied the hole in Earth's ozone layer. The mission duration was 10 days, 22 hours, 34 minutes.

10 Years Ago

November 26, 1999: NASA's Galileo spacecraft completed a historic flyby of Jupiter's moon, Io. Through Galileo's instruments, scientists determined that some of the volcanoes located on Io are hotter than any on Earth.

Five Years Ago

November 12, 2004: NASA's X-43A research vehicle set a new world speed record by a jet-powered aircraft when it traveled at Mach 10 - nearly 7,000 miles per hour. The X-43A's air-breathing scramjet engine has no moving parts. The aircraft is part of NASA's Hyper-X Program.

Amnesia-Like Behavior Returns on Spirit

Until Oct. 24, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover had gone more than six months without an episode of amnesia-like symptoms like those that appeared on four occasions earlier this year.

In these amnesia events, Spirit fails to record data from the day's activities onto the type of computer memory -- non-volatile "flash" memory -- that can retain the data when the rover powers down for its energy-conserving periods of "sleep." The reappearance of this behavior in recent days might delay the start of planned drives by Spirit geared toward extricating the rover from a patch of soft soil where its wheels have been embedded since April.

Spirit sent data Oct. 24 through Oct. 27 indicating that the rover was not using its flash memory. The rover also has alternate memory (volatile, random-access memory) where data can be saved for communicating to Earth if the communication session comes before the next sleep period. Spirit remains in communication with Earth, maintaining good power and temperatures.

"We still don't have information about what causes these amnesia events," said Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "If they are intermittent and infrequent, they are a nuisance that would set us back a day or two when they occur. If the condition becomes persistent or frequent, we will need to go to an alternate strategy that avoids depending on flash memory. We would only get data collected the same day and any unsent data from an earlier day would be lost. The total volume of data returned by the rover is expected to be about the same."

This week, an independent panel of robotics experts has been reviewing the rover team's tests and plans for getting Spirit away from the site called "Troy," where the rover's wheels broke through a crusty, dark surface layer and became embedded in bright, loose material that had been hidden underneath.

Spirit has worked on Mars for more than 69 months in what was originally planned as a three-month mission.

Frost-Covered Phoenix Lander Seen in Winter Images

Winter images of NASA's Phoenix Lander showing the lander shrouded in dry-ice frost on Mars have been captured with the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The HiRISE camera team at the University of Arizona, Tucson, captured one image of the Phoenix lander on July 30, 2009, and the other on Aug. 22, 2009. That's when the sun began peeking over the horizon of the northern polar plains during winter, the imaging team said. The first day of spring in the northern hemisphere began Oct. 26.

"We decided to try imaging the site despite the low light levels," said HiRISE team member Ingrid Spitale of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

"The power of the HiRISE camera helped us see it even under these poor light conditions," added HiRISE team member Michael Mellon of the University of Colorado in Boulder, who was also on the Phoenix Mars Lander science team.

The HiRISE team targeted their camera at the known location of the lander to get the new images and compared them to a HiRISE image of the frost-free lander taken in June 2008. That enabled them to identify the hardware disguised by frost, despite the fact that their views were hindered by poor lighting and by atmospheric haze, which often obscures the surface at this location and season.

Carbon dioxide frost completely blankets the surface in both images. The amount of carbon dioxide frost builds as late winter transitions to early spring, so the layer of frost is thicker in the Aug. 22 image.

Successful Flight Through Enceladus Plume

The Cassini spacecraft has weathered the Monday, Nov. 2, flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus in good health and has been sending images and data of the encounter back to Earth. Cassini had approached Enceladus more closely before, but this passage took the spacecraft on its deepest plunge yet through the heart of the plume shooting out from the south polar region. Scientists are eagerly sifting through the results.

In an unprocessed image (top right), sunlight brightens a crescent curve along the edge of Enceladus and highlights the moon's misty plume. The image was captured by Cassini's narrow-angle camera as the spacecraft passed about 190,000 kilometers (120,000 miles) over the moon.

A second raw image (bottom right) appears to show separate jets spewing from the moon. This image was taken from approximately 330,000 kilometers (200,000 miles) away.

At its closest point on Nov. 2, Cassini flew about 100 kilometers (60 miles) above the surface of Enceladus.

Since the discovery of the plume in 2005, scientists have been captivated by the enigmatic jets. Previous flybys detected water vapor, sodium and organic molecules, but scientists need to know more about the plume's composition and density to characterize the source, possibly a liquid ocean under the moon's icy surface. It would also help them determine whether Enceladus has the conditions necessary for life.

The Mars Hoax Goes Viral

For the sixth year in a row, a message about the Red Planet is infecting worldwide email boxes. It instructs readers to go outside after dark on August 27th and behold the sky. "Mars will look as large as the full moon," it says. "No one alive today will ever see this again."

Don't believe it.

Here's what will really happen if you go outside after dark on August 27th. Nothing. Mars won't be there. On that date, the red planet will be nearly 250 million km away from Earth and completely absent from the evening sky.

The Mars Hoax got its start in 2003 when Earth and Mars really did have a close encounter. On Aug. 27th of that year, Mars was only 56 million km away, a 60,000-year record for martian close approaches to Earth. Someone sent an email alerting friends to the event. The message contained some misunderstandings and omissions—but what email doesn't? A piece of advanced technology called the "forward button" did the rest.

Tolerant readers may say that the Mars Hoax is not really a hoax, because it is not an intentional trick. The composer probably believed everything he or she wrote in the message. If that's true, a better name might be the "Mars Misunderstanding" or maybe the "Confusing-Email-About-Mars-You-Should-Delete-and-Not-Forward-to-Anyone-Except-Your-In-Laws."

Another aspect of the Mars Hoax: It says "Mars will look as large as the full Moon if you magnify it 75x using a backyard telescope." The italicized text is usually omitted from verbal and written summaries of the Hoax. (For example, see the beginning of this story.) Does this fine print make the Mars Hoax true? After all, if you magnify the tiny disk of Mars 75x, it does subtend an angle about the same as the Moon.

No. Even with magnification, Mars does not look the same as a full Moon.

This has more to do with the mysterious inner workings of the human brain than cold, hard physics. Looking at Mars magnified 75x through a slender black tube (the eyepiece of a telescope) and looking at the full Moon shining unfettered in the open sky are two very different experiences.

A good reference is the Moon Illusion. Moons on the horizon look huge; Moons directly overhead look smaller. In both cases, it is the same Moon, but the human mind perceives the size of the Moon differently depending on its surroundings.

Likewise, your perception of Mars is affected by the planet's surroundings. Locate the planet at the end of a little dark tunnel, and it is going to look tiny regardless of magnification.