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Detailed map shows dry Moon
Washington (AFP) Feb 12, 2009 A new detailed map of the Moon released Thursday shows the Earth's satellite holds very little water and reveals never-before seen craters at the poles, an international research team said. "The surface can tell us a lot about what's happening inside the Moon, but until now mapping has been very limited," C.K Shum, professor of Earth sciences at Ohio State University, said in the February 13 issue of Science. "For instance, with this new high-resolution map, we can confirm that there is very little water on the Moon today, even deep in the interior. And we can use that information to think about water on other planets, including Mars." Researchers showed that the Moon's surface is stiff, compared to the relative flexiblity of the Earth's crust, which rises and falls as water flows above or below the ground. The hard surface suggests very little water, researchers said. If there were water, even deep within the Moon, the surface would be more flexible than it was shown to be. The surface of Mars falls somewhere between the Earth and the Moon. Researchers said the red planet's stiffness suggests a dry surface and any water in Mars's interior is deep. Researchers used a laser altimeter (LALT) on the Japanese Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE) and two smaller sub-satellites to get 15-kilometer images of the entire surface. "This design significantly improved our ability to model gravity fields on the moon, and let us compute the main satellite's orbit more accurately than was possible before, especially over the far side the Moon," Shum said. The Moon's highest point lies 11 kilometers (more than 6.5 miles) above the rim of the Dririchlet-Jackson basin near the equator. The lowest, at nine kilometers (5.5 miles), lies at the bottom of Antoniadi crater near the south pole. The map revealed never-before-seen craters at both poles, including a 15-kilometer-wide crater at the south pole. The new details will help guide future lunar rovers during future geological research missions. The principal investigator of the LALT instrument, and lead author, is Hiroshi Araki of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. Shum is a member of the LALT team. Share This Article With Planet Earth
Related Links Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com Lunar Dreams and more
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Is Shipped To Florida
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Feb 12, 2009NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, spacecraft was loaded on a truck Wednesday to begin its two-day journey to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Launch is targeted for April 24. |
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