In this video White Label Space team scientist Mark Bentley discusses two recent lunar science topics that could be further investigated with experiments on GLXP missions.
He explains the "Two Moons Hypothesis" as well as a fluid drilling technique that could assist lunar science.
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Sep 23, 2011
Sep 8, 2011
Researcher Sought for Lunar Regolith Project
White Label Space is looking for a researcher interested to do a feasibility study on lunar regolith anchoring technologies and lunar construction techniques.
This project will involve interaction with a partner organization that is developing a lunar regolith testbed and coming up with a conceptual design for a demonstrator payload to be flown on our Google Lunar X PRIZE mission. The demonstrator would have a scientific function as well as demonstrating novel techniques for regolith interactions.
The project would be ideal as a university project, but we are willing to work with anyone who has the time and knowledge to contribute. No funding will be provided for this project however the results will be promoted via our website and online media and the researcher will have access to technical support from the White Label Space engineers and scientists.
For more information, please send a CV and short description of the proposed modes of working to: payloads@whitelabelspace.com
This project will involve interaction with a partner organization that is developing a lunar regolith testbed and coming up with a conceptual design for a demonstrator payload to be flown on our Google Lunar X PRIZE mission. The demonstrator would have a scientific function as well as demonstrating novel techniques for regolith interactions.
The project would be ideal as a university project, but we are willing to work with anyone who has the time and knowledge to contribute. No funding will be provided for this project however the results will be promoted via our website and online media and the researcher will have access to technical support from the White Label Space engineers and scientists.
For more information, please send a CV and short description of the proposed modes of working to: payloads@whitelabelspace.com
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Dec 13, 2009
Water on the Moon and the GLXP
By Mark Bentley - White Label Space Team Scientist
Despite most of us thinking of the Moon as a rather cold and desolate place, the nomenclature of lunar surface features conjures a rather difference image - that of a body awash with seas (Mare) and oceans (Oceani). These dark and relatively homogeneous regions, mainly found on the near side, are of course not water oceans, but volcanic plains. Nevertheless, the search for water in our Solar System continues unabated. Not only is water an essential ingredient for life as we know it, but it is an important resource for future human exploration - providing drinking water, oxygen and fuel components. This is why the detection of water is a bonus prize in the Google Lunar X PRIZE(GLXP) competition.
Most of our understanding of the Solar System, and indeed the Universe, comes from remote sensing - from data acquired from afar. And so the Moon is unique in being the only planetary body, apart from the Earth, for which we have samples from known locations (we know their "provenance"). The rock and regolith (soil) samples returned by the Apollo and Luna missions vastly improved our understanding of our closest neighbour, but they still only give us samples from a handful of sites - this is why more in-situ analyses and sample returns are needed to fully answer the key science questions at the Moon.
The returned lunar samples show evidence of a very dry world - without the water-bearing minerals that we see on Earth - but recently we have discovered that this is not the whole story. Radar observations from the Clementine spacecraft were the first to suggest that water ice might exist in the bottom of craters at high latitude. These data showed a highly scattered radar return - often a signature of multiple scattering in ice, but possibly also arising from a rather rough surface. It had for some time been theorised that water ice could exist in permanently shadowed polar craters; close to the poles, the Sun never rises very high, the solar flux on the surface is low, and it is possible for some craters to remain free from sunlight for millions of years. But this evidence was not conclusive.
The next piece of the puzzle came from the neutron spectrometer on-board Lunar Prospector. Although not capable of detecting water directly, it did detect regions of high hydrogen concentration at both poles, within the top ~40 cm of the surface. Again, there are alternative explanations for the results, but the synergy with the radar data was quite compelling.
More direct evidence came from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument on-board the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. This instrument was an imaging visible and near-infrared spectrometer. This means that it recorded sunlight reflected from the lunar surface and tried to determine mineralogy from the way in which this light is modified, leaving its spectral fingerprint behind. In particular, M3 had a spectral range that included the fingerprint of the hydrogen-oxygen bonds found in water. Importantly, M3 obtains data from only the first few millimetres of the surface.
The most recent data supporting the case for lunar water come from the LCROSS mission. This mission consisted of two parts, a modified rocket stage that was designed to crash into the lunar surface, and an instrumented spacecraft following behind that would image the impact site and hopefully fly through any debris kicked up on impact. The LCROSS impact was targeted at a shadowed crater at the south pole and the impact and observations were very successful. Two results (so far!) support the case for water on the Moon - the near-infrared spectrometer produced data that were only matched by the signature of water, and the ultra-violet spectrometer saw an emission from hydroxyl (the same O-H water by-product seen by M3).
The important thing about the LCROSS results is that they imply water in a significant quantity - approximately 100 kg from a 20 m diameter crater. This is not just a thin layer bound to surface rocks, but enough to perhaps extract and utilise.
So how does this discovery affect the GLXP teams aiming for the water detection prize? The rules say:
"The Water Detection Bonus Prize will be awarded to the first team that provides scientifically conclusive proof of the presence of naturally occurring water on the Moon. The detection of water must be made from a vehicle that has landed on the surface of the Moon and must be featured in a peer-reviewed paper to the satisfaction of the Google Lunar X PRIZE Judging Panel."
This presumably means H2O, rather than a hydrated mineral form. The LCROSS impact crater was expected to be around 20 m wide and 4 m deep. We don't know exactly from where the observed water originated, but this at least places some bounds. There are still important questions to be answered, from both a scientific perspective (where did this water come from? how long has it been there?) and a technical one (in what form is it? can it be easily extracted?). But it raises the stakes for the GLXP water prize.
Putting aside the technical difficulties of landing close to, getting inside, and surviving the lack of power and warmth inside such a crater, what are the implications of this discovery to the GLXP teams? In truth, it is hard to say. We still don't know enough about the location and form of the water before the LCROSS spacecraft impacted. Clearly to maximise the chances of success, any lander would need to be able to get below the surface, but the data we have now do not tell us whether we need a mole, deep drill, or simply a scoop.
To conclude, the discovery of significant amounts of water in shadowed polar craters is exciting, but not a game-changer for the GLXP teams. One probably still has to go to a permanently shadowed polar crater, but the chances of success are considerably higher now - the question is, are they high enough to justify the additional effort and risk?
Further reading:
Despite most of us thinking of the Moon as a rather cold and desolate place, the nomenclature of lunar surface features conjures a rather difference image - that of a body awash with seas (Mare) and oceans (Oceani). These dark and relatively homogeneous regions, mainly found on the near side, are of course not water oceans, but volcanic plains. Nevertheless, the search for water in our Solar System continues unabated. Not only is water an essential ingredient for life as we know it, but it is an important resource for future human exploration - providing drinking water, oxygen and fuel components. This is why the detection of water is a bonus prize in the Google Lunar X PRIZE(GLXP) competition.
Most of our understanding of the Solar System, and indeed the Universe, comes from remote sensing - from data acquired from afar. And so the Moon is unique in being the only planetary body, apart from the Earth, for which we have samples from known locations (we know their "provenance"). The rock and regolith (soil) samples returned by the Apollo and Luna missions vastly improved our understanding of our closest neighbour, but they still only give us samples from a handful of sites - this is why more in-situ analyses and sample returns are needed to fully answer the key science questions at the Moon.
The returned lunar samples show evidence of a very dry world - without the water-bearing minerals that we see on Earth - but recently we have discovered that this is not the whole story. Radar observations from the Clementine spacecraft were the first to suggest that water ice might exist in the bottom of craters at high latitude. These data showed a highly scattered radar return - often a signature of multiple scattering in ice, but possibly also arising from a rather rough surface. It had for some time been theorised that water ice could exist in permanently shadowed polar craters; close to the poles, the Sun never rises very high, the solar flux on the surface is low, and it is possible for some craters to remain free from sunlight for millions of years. But this evidence was not conclusive.
The next piece of the puzzle came from the neutron spectrometer on-board Lunar Prospector. Although not capable of detecting water directly, it did detect regions of high hydrogen concentration at both poles, within the top ~40 cm of the surface. Again, there are alternative explanations for the results, but the synergy with the radar data was quite compelling.
More direct evidence came from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument on-board the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. This instrument was an imaging visible and near-infrared spectrometer. This means that it recorded sunlight reflected from the lunar surface and tried to determine mineralogy from the way in which this light is modified, leaving its spectral fingerprint behind. In particular, M3 had a spectral range that included the fingerprint of the hydrogen-oxygen bonds found in water. Importantly, M3 obtains data from only the first few millimetres of the surface.
The most recent data supporting the case for lunar water come from the LCROSS mission. This mission consisted of two parts, a modified rocket stage that was designed to crash into the lunar surface, and an instrumented spacecraft following behind that would image the impact site and hopefully fly through any debris kicked up on impact. The LCROSS impact was targeted at a shadowed crater at the south pole and the impact and observations were very successful. Two results (so far!) support the case for water on the Moon - the near-infrared spectrometer produced data that were only matched by the signature of water, and the ultra-violet spectrometer saw an emission from hydroxyl (the same O-H water by-product seen by M3).
The important thing about the LCROSS results is that they imply water in a significant quantity - approximately 100 kg from a 20 m diameter crater. This is not just a thin layer bound to surface rocks, but enough to perhaps extract and utilise.
So how does this discovery affect the GLXP teams aiming for the water detection prize? The rules say:
"The Water Detection Bonus Prize will be awarded to the first team that provides scientifically conclusive proof of the presence of naturally occurring water on the Moon. The detection of water must be made from a vehicle that has landed on the surface of the Moon and must be featured in a peer-reviewed paper to the satisfaction of the Google Lunar X PRIZE Judging Panel."
This presumably means H2O, rather than a hydrated mineral form. The LCROSS impact crater was expected to be around 20 m wide and 4 m deep. We don't know exactly from where the observed water originated, but this at least places some bounds. There are still important questions to be answered, from both a scientific perspective (where did this water come from? how long has it been there?) and a technical one (in what form is it? can it be easily extracted?). But it raises the stakes for the GLXP water prize.
Putting aside the technical difficulties of landing close to, getting inside, and surviving the lack of power and warmth inside such a crater, what are the implications of this discovery to the GLXP teams? In truth, it is hard to say. We still don't know enough about the location and form of the water before the LCROSS spacecraft impacted. Clearly to maximise the chances of success, any lander would need to be able to get below the surface, but the data we have now do not tell us whether we need a mole, deep drill, or simply a scoop.
To conclude, the discovery of significant amounts of water in shadowed polar craters is exciting, but not a game-changer for the GLXP teams. One probably still has to go to a permanently shadowed polar crater, but the chances of success are considerably higher now - the question is, are they high enough to justify the additional effort and risk?
Further reading:
- The Wet Side of the Moon, New York Times op-ed by William Marshall
- Ice on the Moon, a slightly outdated, but useful summary of the search for ice on the Moon
Aug 27, 2009
White Label Space to Participate in ESA Field Campaign
On the last weekend of September the White Label Space team will test its first rover prototype during a field campaign organized by European Space Agency (ESA) in the course of the ExoGeoLab project. The campaign will take place in Germany, near the Laacher lake in the Eifel region, which is particularly interesting due to it's geological characteristics.
The aim of the ExoGeoLab is to operate comprehensive instrument packages that could help in the technical research and science preparation of future lander/rover missions. Also part of this campaign are TNO with the MECA (Mission Execution Crew Assistant) Project and the Austrian Space Forum with the Aouda spacesuit simulator for Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) on Mars.
The aim of the ExoGeoLab is to operate comprehensive instrument packages that could help in the technical research and science preparation of future lander/rover missions. Also part of this campaign are TNO with the MECA (Mission Execution Crew Assistant) Project and the Austrian Space Forum with the Aouda spacesuit simulator for Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) on Mars.
Aug 15, 2009
Mark Bentley
Dr Mark Bentley is a planetary scientist at the Space Research Institute (IWF) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (AAS) and has experiece working on many previous and planned space science missions with international partners from around the world. He has a passion for space science and in particular the scientific exploration of the Moon.
A specialist in the fields of Space Weathering, in situ instrumentation and data analysis, Mark's PhD research investigated the process of space weathering as it might occur on Mercury through a series of laboratory experiments. His postdoctoral research work at Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute of the UK's Open University focussed development of the HP3 gamma-ray backscatter densitometer (DEN) originally proposed for ESA's BepiColombo Lander (MSE).
A specialist in the fields of Space Weathering, in situ instrumentation and data analysis, Mark's PhD research investigated the process of space weathering as it might occur on Mercury through a series of laboratory experiments. His postdoctoral research work at Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute of the UK's Open University focussed development of the HP3 gamma-ray backscatter densitometer (DEN) originally proposed for ESA's BepiColombo Lander (MSE).
***
Aug 13, 2008
Plant Experiment on Lunar Lander
NASA scientists have suggested conducting plant growth experiments on the moon's surface prior to future human missions.This might be good secondary payload on a Google Lunar X PRIZE mission, being a first experiment at In-Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU) approaches on the moon. Although, it would take a special plant to survive approximately 2 weeks of darkness during a lunar night.
Considering the high delta-V needed to soft land on the moon, it's clear that future lunar bases will benefit greatly from any reduction in the delivered mass. Lunar regolith, or some of its components, might even provide some of the nutrients for plant growth, thus eliminating even more mass that needs to be delivered to future lunar bases.
Aug 10, 2008
Journey to the center of the Earth ... and beyond!
Cave explorer Bill Stone talks about his journeys to the center of the earth, sending an autonomous robot to Jupiter’s moon Europa, and his plans of digging for lunar ice on the moon.
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