Hubble maps minerals on the moon
posted at 11:55 am on July 21, 2007 by Bryan
Share on Facebook | printer-friendly
Not for the first time, actually. We started shooting images of the moon with Hubble circa 1999, mostly to see if we could. Hubble was designed to look at stuff that’s faint and far away and doesn’t move much over time. The moon is really close, extremely bright (by Hubble standards), and moves very fast compared to Hubble’s speed (17,000 mph, more or less) and the relative stillness of the more distant objects Hubble was designed to study. So a science team tried a quick experiment to see if it was possible to get a decent shot of the moon with Hubble, and it was.
A couple of years ago, Hubble was used to look for oxygen on the moon.
And geologists have also been using Hubble to map minerals on and below the lunar surface.
Space scientists are keen to map the concentration of the titanium-dioxide-rich mineral ilmenite on the moon’s surface, says Jim Garvin of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Oxygen production from TiO2-enhanced lunar soils could potentially make breathable oxygen and even oxidiser for rocket fuel.”
UV images of the lunar surface show patterns that correlate with the concentration of TiO2 measured in lunar samples collected by the Apollo missions, and so a map of the UV variations can be used to create a map of TiO2 abundance. However, Earth’s atmosphere interferes with UV readings, so the team used Hubble to take UV images of a small area of the lunar surface that included the landing sites of the Apollo 15 and 17 spacecraft.
The point of this whole exercise is to figure out whether and where it might be possible to build a somewhat self-sustaining base on the moon. Astronauts, scientists and whoever else ends up living there will need to be able to “live off the land” as much as possible. And if there are enough minerals of the right types and quantities, it might be possible to assemble launch vehicles on the moon, gas ‘em up there and send them on their way to Mars.
Which would be very cool.
It’s also worth pointing out that that telescope wasn’t designed to do any of this stuff. Exploring the moon with the Hubble Space Telescope in preparation for eventual manned missions to Mars is very much a bonus.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Comment pages:
Wicked cool, I guess.
BadgerHawk on July 21, 2007 at 12:01 PM
Incredibly cool and exciting. And this was done by the individualistic Americans and not the “collectivist Chinese”. I wonder how that was possible…
Now, I’d like them to map all the terrorist camps on Earth, then all the dog-fighting sites. Then point them out and leave it up to me to do something about all of them.
Thank you Bryan for a wonderful topic and post. Always sad that we’re not further along in space exploration because we’re so backwords still as a ‘humanity’ and have to spend money on utter stone/stick-aged nonsense,
Entelechy on July 21, 2007 at 12:05 PM
Hey, I’ve seen the new version of The Time Machine. Say no to moon mining! . . . .well cept with causality Miss Future Babe is born . . Say yes to moon mining!
- The Cat
P.S. Course if we’d just start mining the asteriods then Battle Tech could happen. I wanna be a Mech Warrior Baby (sung to a Kid Rock song)
P.P.S. Man, I’m a geek.
MirCat on July 21, 2007 at 12:08 PM
C’mon Bryan, you don’t *really* believe that we sent men to the Moon and they brought back samples, do ya? That was all faked by the Bush Adminstration to make us forget about Iraq!
What? The Hubble took pictures of the Apollo landing sites? Uh, well, sure, they can SAY that, but, but, how do we know THOSE aren’t fake too? Geez Bryan, you’ll believe anything Bush tells you!
Tony737 on July 21, 2007 at 12:08 PM
All we have to do is get the troublemakers off the rockets.
(In every sense.)
We should have had domed bases on Luna by naow.
It’s a sign of the weakeness on humanity’s will and common sense that we’ve let ourselves get turned away from exploring and colonizing the solar system by the jabberings and terrorism of medievalists.
We need a new place to protect our protean achievements.
And a better challenge for our ingenuity and passion.
And preserve Nature’s best hope for meeting itself.
profitsbeard on July 21, 2007 at 12:08 PM
A wonderful article. For this part:
I suggest the first explorers be the Goracle, Hillary, Obama for government leaders; Wesley Clark for defense; the 9th circuit court for judges; Harry Reid & Nancy Pelosi for Congress; for entertainment-Sheryl Crowe, and for news-
Keith Olberman.
Live long and prosper!
Tennessee Dave on July 21, 2007 at 12:12 PM
screw moon bases we shoulda’ had warp drive and transporters and food replicators and I have the perfect spot for my very own holodeck.
Pictures of the moon. Hmph! Wheres my flying car!
frreal on July 21, 2007 at 12:37 PM
Earth First! We’ll mine the other planets and moons later…
Tim Burton on July 21, 2007 at 12:37 PM
I love science!
/ sighs happily
Bob's Kid on July 21, 2007 at 12:38 PM
Forget Hubble. Get yourself a nice FLI astrophoto camera or one made by Apogee. Of course, you’ll need a good telescope and mount. Maybe a robotic mountis more your style.
-JediAstroPhotographer
jediwebdude on July 21, 2007 at 12:51 PM
I do not know why the “Ugly American” gets such a bad rap. We are awesome. You don’t see Iran mapping the moon…
Theworldisnotenough on July 21, 2007 at 1:23 PM
A Quick and Private Impetus To Exploit The Moon
It’s funny. When people talk about moon colonization most folks shrug or dismiss it as a cartoon fanatsy. BUT if you say, okay if you think it’s too far out to think about, then what do we have to lose by proclaiming a free “Homestead Act” for the moon — you and your descendants literally own taxless forever whatever lunar territory you can physically stake out yourself if you can get there, via Virgin or who whomever. Then all the rolling eyes and chuckles kind of smirk serious because they don’t like even the possibility of such enterprising intruding on the “pristine moon,”
James Greenidge
Queens NY — Who’d happily stake a piece of the moon if he could jump high enough.
jamesgreenidge on July 21, 2007 at 1:51 PM
I can’t think of a better project for NASA then to establish a moon site as well as completion and expansion of the ISS.
The commercial potential is enormous. Just think of all the things that have improved our lives since the early Apollo missions. If I had a choice as to where I wanted my tax dollars spent, but we don’t get a choice anymore, do we?
Kini on July 21, 2007 at 2:32 PM
How long till we hear the cries of lunar warming?
boomer on July 21, 2007 at 3:12 PM
(best Mel Blanc impression)
Wabbit Season… Duck Season… Wabbit Season…
Living on, or visiting, the Moon sounds cool to me. Anytime we push ourselves to do more, we create more industry, better technology. It’s all worth the time, effort and $$$!
The Moon is 400th the size of the Sun, but 400 times closer, making total eclipses of the Sun possible. One of God’s way of saying, yes, I made all this!
Ordinary1 on July 21, 2007 at 4:20 PM
You gotta be proud of having a hand in that thing, huh Bryan?
I’m glad they’ve gotten so much use out of Hubble, we’ve learned a lot from it.
Bad Candy on July 21, 2007 at 5:50 PM
HERE IS a company offering to take you around the moon for a mere hundred million dollars.
Actually got to talk several times to the only geologist ever to tread on the moon. Really great guy considering he was both a ‘moon walker’ and a US Senator. (Too bad he isn’t still a Senator… He was a good conservative too.)
I kept bugging him to sell me a piece of moon rock from his ‘personal stash’. (I used to be in the rare mineral business, and it would have been such a coup.). He kept insisting he didn’t keep even a speck of dust… But I’d have found some way, if it had been me up there.
LegendHasIt on July 21, 2007 at 6:00 PM
STOP LUNAR WARMING!How can we even think about mining the moon. Think of all the space microbes we’ll wantonly kill.
Mojave Mark on July 21, 2007 at 6:49 PM
“Hubble”
Wasn’t there a plan to decommission it, a while back? There was a push to send up a shuttle and bring its corpse back to earth intact, rather than having it burn up in the atmosphere. It seems to have faded from the news recently. Along with the Mars rovers, it’s a good advertisement for NASA; although it had a wonky start, with its deformed main mirror, the telescope has continued to produce great newspaper photos.
Apeking on July 21, 2007 at 7:08 PM
Wasn’t there some sort of statement made back in the 80s by a Greenpeace member expressing concern about the lunar ecology?
Yes. The ecology of a vacuum. (Atmosphere type “0″ for those familiar with an old SF game called Traveller….)
Patrick Chester on July 21, 2007 at 7:11 PM
May God Bless America!
Zorro on July 21, 2007 at 7:28 PM
The Moon is receeding from the Earth about 4 cm per year. Some time in the future, total eclipses will be history, and we’ll only have annular eclipses.
However, considering that the only theory that comes close to explaining the Moon’s existence posits that the early Earth was hit by a smaller planet, with some of the debris coalescing to form the Moon, with the odds of such a collision producing exactly that result being very small, I’d say it’s easy to believe that God simply put it there.
Bigfoot on July 21, 2007 at 9:28 PM
Sounds like something He’d do.
;-)
infidel4life on July 21, 2007 at 11:57 PM
Very cool :-)
Mooseman on July 22, 2007 at 9:30 AM
But, but how could they verify Apollo 15 and 17 landing site readings when we never went to the moon to begin with???
Neo on July 22, 2007 at 10:51 AM
Neo on July 22, 2007 at 10:51 AM
You should have taken the red pill Neo..
doriangrey on July 22, 2007 at 12:37 PM
Comment pages: