I think people got confused about that -- the depth comes from the infrared spectrometers' ability to see only the top couple mm. THey were talking about that to contrast it with lunar prospector, which can see deeper. Now, you might argue that if LP didn't see H where the spectrometers do see it, that might be evidence that it's only in top couple of mm, but if the abundance was low enough, LP might not see it.

M3 only saw the water near the poles. Happens to be in highlands near the poles. Problem is that M3 only goes out to 3 microns, and has trouble detecting the signature where there's also thermal emission, equatorward of 60 degrees or so. VIMS does have holes over the maria, and this was a question I asked Roger Clark...who has never replied to any email I've ever sent to him. Oh well.

--Emily

. . . "lunar weather" . . . "toilets" . . . "dry sterile thunder" . . . "water on the moon" . . ."electric fingers of light" . . .



Snatches of conversation from a widely respected space science forum now gone lunatic!

... I wonder what the name of this forum is.

I wonder if the assumption that the water is limited to the top few mm is the result of an assumption that the water is created by the solar wind. That would limit its presence to the surface.

(groan)

You win.

Juramike, thanks for making the connection! You have made my weekend as well!!!!

The solar wind idea is an interesting one. It might play a role of some kind. I can't help but think the processes involved are probably far more complicated than that. Here is a report from 2008 that suggests evidence for a water source beneath the surface.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19926644.200

I never thought we would see a 'follow the water' strategy for exploration of our moon! Maybe a water cycle on our nearest neighbor...

It does sound a little lunatic. ha ha ha!

As a curiousity, would water ice survive a lunar day inside the descent stage of the Apollo Lunar Module?

Not to be a wet blanket about the whole lunar water thing, but I still think that this discovery will ultimately prove to be solely of mineralogical/scientific interest rather than a practical future resource.

If there were endogenous water deposits at anything like an accessible depth anywhere on the Moon you'd think that aeons of slow outgassing would have built a pair of substantial polar caps in the permanently shadowed regions, even though most of the H2O would have been photodissociated upon release (most of which probably would have happened in the daytime). These caps would have been 'gardened' by macro/micrometeorite impacts, sure, but there would still be quite a bit of water at or near the surface. Evidence to date indicates that, at best, there is a very sparse amount of ice in the polar regions throroughly mixed with the regolith.

So...I wouldn't be investing in any lunar well-digging companies just yet.

Much less whalers. :-)

--Greg

A complicated question. You have fuel tanks, engine parts, batteries and black boxes, various bays, all kinds of nooks and crannies. You'd have to specify a location in the descent stage (preferably saying which descent stage, they are at different latitudes and orientations), and then someone with the proper engineering knowlege (not me) could do a thermal analysis. Since it's mostly metal, you would expect the temperature to even out a lot, and that the noon temperature would probably put the whole thing above freezing. But still, there are going to be hotter and colder areas. And what exactly the ice is attached to will make a difference in conductivity. Also you need to know how much ice. Big chunk, ...little chunk, ...snowflake? What did you have in mind?

My guess, and it really is only a guess, is that standing above the lunar surface in roasting sunlight for several earth days will heat up the whole thing enough to do a lot of damage to interior ice.

That sounds about right to me. After the first couple of lunar days there couldn't have been much left.

Phil Stooke

Lots of interesting blog posts re. the "water on the Moon" story at this week's "Carnival of Space", which I'm proud to be hosting on CUMBRIAN SKY...

http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2009/09/2...al-of-space-122

One of the best is Emily's 2 parter, which you really should read if you haven't already.

The series of "water on the Moon" paper has finally be published in Science today
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol326/issue5952/index.dtl