Not really - they had the same findings from Apollo samples. Everyone thought it was contamination.

Phil

If they thought it was contamination, then how did they reach the conclusion that the Moon was "bone dry"? The contamination would mask any negative result. The interpretation should have been that the tests were inconclusive, rather than a definite finding of no water.

So instead of doing the hard science to find out whether the results were contaminated, everyone just assumed they were. A startling discovery 30 to 35 years ago that would have changed the paradigm for space exploration back then was simply shrugged off as an errant reading, not once but twice from two separate sources and experiments. They simply did not believe the data.

Unfortunately this type of thing is not all that uncommon, just normally a little less dramatic. Pride comes before the fall.

I agree that people may have rejected their findings too quickly, but it wouldn't have 'changed the paradigm'. The amounts we are talking about, a molecule or two thick, will make no difference at all to anything. Only the possible concentrations at the poles have the chance to change the paradigm.

As for the bone dry thing, the lunar surface even with these molucules adhering to it is dryer than any bone. That old conclusion referred to chemically or geologically active water, and it's still true today. The problem here is overhyping of the recent results. Water, yes, but not as we know it, or in any useful amount. LCROSS results may still be different.

Phil

Phil, I think that 0.1 wt% water isn't so negligible, even though not very usable for human activities, perhaps... however, let's consider also the amount of water seemed to increase with depth!

I noticed the depth thing too. That is potentially significant. We won't know for sure one way or another until more exploration is done. A lot of that exploration may depend upon the results from this LCROSS mission. I hope we get it sooner rather than later.

Interesting article from New Scientist.

"Was moon-smashing mission doomed from the start?"

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1799...-the-start.html

Part of the problem with the water story is that we are getting inconsistent statements. As I understand it the water is only a few molecules thick on the very surface of the regolith, and much of it leaves the surface when heated during the day, then reforms as the sun sets. That is very little water. Then we have statements about getting a glass of water out of a tonne of regolith - or whatever the specific amount is. I think these are not compatible, and the only way I can reconcile them is to say that the tonne of regolith is not dug up in one place but scraped in a layer 1 mm thick over a large area. In other words the bulk regolith is 'bone dry' and a very thin surface layer has all the water. I might be wrong here, but I think not. As far as I know the water detected by M3 is not chemically active - not producing clay minerals in significant quantities, for instance. Obviously we need a lot of follow-up studies of this, but it does seem to me that the water story has been exaggerated in the media.

Phil

That's the idea I got as well - and is the figures I used when estimating just how useful it might be.

But now I think we do know that the various probes only claimed to have measured the top mm or so -- I don't see anyone claiming to have proven the H2O was limited to the top mm.

Given a porus medium being subjected to a daily barrage of hydrogen, and knowing how motile hydrogen is, I find it difficult to believe that it wouldn't permeate the regolith to considerable depth. The regolith should be in equilibrium with respect to hydrogen content -- losing as much as it gains in any given day -- but given a slight preference to move down (caused by gravity) plus a tendency of anything very far below the surface to stay put (caused by lower temperatures) I can't see how that equilibrium would be reached with hydrogen limited to just the top mm.

As everyone says, with any luck we'll see some exciting real data in a few months. And perhaps this will excite some interest in lunar rovers with some digging capability.

--Greg

Wanna get the water story of the Moon? Get Oppy from Mars and put her there.

New data and images released today, but still no word on what the spectrometer detected.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/m...OSS_impact.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/m...act_images.html

--Emily

I am sorry but that first image seems to me rather underwhelming.

Can we stop with the "I'm disappointed" and "this is underwhelming" whining already?
If you wanna watch unrealistic fireworks, go watch a Hollywood blockbuster movie or something. LCROSS wasn't done for the awe factor but science returned.

Bravo!
That "underwhelming" image is the first solid indication that LCROSS may meet all it's science goals. What more do you want from a science mission!?

I resisted the temptation to post first after Emily because I wanted to allow time for the naysayers to repent on their own terms. That worked out well.

Right! But they better had involved Hollywood which had added quite a bit explosive to make it clear for the public/audience

Btw. Carry along something like a bomb wouldn't that have been better anyway (in terms of getting better signal/measurements) - unless I'm totally wrong.

Quote: "In the coming weeks, the LCROSS team and other observation assets will continue to analyze and verify data collected from the LCROSS impacts. Any new information will undergo the normal scientific review process and will be released as soon as it is available."

I hope this doesn't mean that they will try to sit on any spectroscopic (water / no water) findings until an article has cleared peer review. In the event of a positive finding, I doubt it could be kept secret anyway.

In recent years, the big journals have been pretty good about allowing significant results to be announced in advance of publication. When they've got a concrete result, I'm sure they'll announce it.

--Greg

The first event I'm looking toward where there may be any semi-public discussion of scientific findings will be the next Lunar Exploration and Analysis Group (LEAG) meeting, which is Nov 16-19. All of day 2 (Nov 17) will be devoted to LRO and LCROSS.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/leag2009/

--Emily

Significant?

The point being that disappointment with the size of the plume does not equate to naysaying regarding the entire mission. I am now as ready as anyone to be pleasantly surprised by the spectroscopic results!

It just means that stuff is in a gas phase instead of being dust. A vapor of what, is the question.

--Emily

I found the total radiance graph http://www.nasa.gov/394533main_VSP-NSP-total-radiance.png very interesting. It seems that there is a drop in mid IR radiance in the first few seconds after the impact. Water has a very high absorbance in mid IR and I wonder whether this graph has a water signiture. Does anyone know how dust would behave?

error page...page not found. Perhaps it was posted by mistake and quickly taken down.

Edit: or was it just a bad link you posted?

Remove the ) from the end of the URL.



Edit: Corrected now.

BTW, those are these:
Confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed region on the Moon
Identify the form/state of hydrogen observed by at the lunar poles
Quantify, if present, the amount of water in the lunar regolith, with respect to hydrogen concentrations
Characterize the lunar regolith within a permanently shadowed crater on the Moon

The middle ones do hinge on them not declaring that they chose the wrong spot, and concluding that other spots are different.

http://www.roscosmos.ru/NewsDoSele.asp?NEWSID=7818

Translating: The LCROSS failure was predicted even before the start of the mission

Several lunar scientists announced that the failure of LCROSS had been predicted even before the start of the mission. (It's not about a technical failure, but about public disappointment)

New Scientist journal cites scientists who have predicted the unfortunate end of the mission in august 2009. One of them is Peter Schultz. According to him the quantity of the impact ejecta was overemphasized. Peter says that the angle of the plume was calculated incorrectly. It was estimated it would be 45 degrees, but Schultz received a 30-degree result.

The camera's imaged the crater right ? but so far it's only a few pixels on the whole field of view. I was under the impression we would see a crater of many many pixels, like we see from LRO, or was that my misconception ?

Half way down this page:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/m...act_images.html

you can see a 2 m/pixel image of the c. 10 m diameter crater. But it's infrared - we are seeing the warm ejecta, not topography. Remember it's in permanent shadow!

But LRO is attempting to use LROC to get the kind of high resolution images you are thinking of. At this point it's not known if it can get good images in permanent shadow. If it does, it would be imaging using light reflected off surrounding hills. It might take several attempts with different lighting to get anything, if it's possible at all.

Phil

Wouldn't the impact flash produce enough visible light to light up a wide area of Cabeus? Or is it the case that the impact spot was so profoundly cold, that it was only heated up to, say, room temperature? Not white-hot, in common terminology? Or maybe the following spacecraft was just unlucky enough that none of the frames coincided with a very short visible flash?

That sounds like the safe bet. Doubt that the flash proper lasted more than a few milliseconds at best.

http://www.seti.org/csc/lectures

10/21/2009
Special Panel: LCROSS Mission - the first results of the impact

No, they did not divulge the science results, but provided some interesting background information. For example, they made real-time decisions about how to allocate the limited telemetry bandwidth, favoring scientifically valuable spectroscopy over "pretty pictures." Video of the talk is (or will be) available on Youtube.

Manned spaceflight reference redacted - ADMIN

Did any UK members watch The Sky at Night last night?

A Special program about LCROSS. While chatting to Patrick back in the UK Chris Lintott seemed to hint, based on his interview with the LCROSS PI, that we might hear some very interesting results quite soon - implying they had detected water.

The video of that SETI Institute colloquium is now up on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/setiinstitute

Special Panel Presentation and Discussion with Tony Colaprete, Jennifer Heldmann and Diane Wooden.

Anyone?

Yes.

And what did you make of Chris Lintotts's remarks to Patrick? I thought he was making it quite obvious that LCROSS had found water in the plume/ejecta.

You may be right but I didn't draw that inference whilst watching it. I assumed the programme was recorded a while ago.

LOL How could you not have... he all but said they had found it lol.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/68841092.html

Some hint of a result from LRO observation of the impact site.

No he didn't. He said the PI seemed to have a smile on his face that suggested he might be happier with the results than he was letting on. Having watched it - I went back and looked at him, and he just looked kind of smug to be honest.

So LRO didn't see evidence of water. This is probably going to be classified as a dry impact after all.

Magnesium and mercury? Intriguing, but not what we expected.

Although they didn't show any trace of the impact, are the Hubble observations of the impact site likely to make into the PDS?

Hubble data isn't archived at the PDS since its main purpose isn't planetary science. The data can be accessed here among other places. The LCROSS impact observations are already there. Judging by the preview images, there's nothing to see from the imaging standpoint.

Just wondering what the limb of the Moon looked like from Hubble