Water on the moon
Podcast: Download
By Andy Kaiser
Article ID: 1348
On October 9, 2009, NASA’s LCROSS mission (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) slammed a “Centaur” rocket into the moon, into a dark, ancient crater named “Cabeus”. After a silent explosion of moon guts, the rocket was destroyed. The resulting ejecta was huge, measuring six miles across. NASA then surveyed that moon plume, and found water. Even in the tiny section of the plume that the instruments could survey, they found about 27 gallons of water! H2O! Translucent gold!
By Earth standards, the moon is still extremely dry, about as dry as a desert. But, even a desert can still hold enough water to support life.
NASA’s LCROSS mission is the first indicator of significant amounts of water in Earth’s neighborhood. A critical person might say, “so what?” This is not the first discovery of water in outer space, or even on the moon. Other planets and moons contain ice, and perhaps liquid water, though we don’t yet know how much of what states there are.
The discovery of water on the moon is still very significant. Here’s why:
1) Knowledge: We add to the current store of scientific knowledge. It puts another piece in the puzzle of how the Universe works, how the moon formed, and ultimately helps us to improve the human condition.
2) Alien life: It provides additional evidence to the notion that life could exist outside of Earth. For those who believe life originated on Earth through a natural process, having a higher abundance of life-making ingredients increases the chances of there being alien life. What do we need for life? From our current understanding, we need water, carbon, and an energy source. Carbon is everywhere. We know that water is remarkably abundant. Energy sources abound (we’re not just talking about the sun). Get the right catalyst in place, and so-called miracles can happen.
3) Moon bases: When we get to the moon, we could “live off the land”. There are two significant aspects: Humans who live there could drink the local water. They could also move around the moon with vehicles powered by a hydrogen/oxygen fuel source, all extracted from available water. And, there’s another use for the oxygen: breathing! Fuel, water and life support are very expensive items to transport from the Earth to the moon. Having them already in place will make a moon base far easier to create and maintain.
4) Human life in off-world colonies: You don’t think a moon base is important? Well, it is. Right now, we Earthlings are horribly susceptible to complete extinction. Our entire species could easily be wiped out. Take your pick of any horrible natural disaster. Just ask the dinosaurs why they didn’t do anything about the fire from the sky, the killer rock that, so many millions of years ago, destroyed them all. There are also more embarrassing (but just as effective) ways to die, by killing off our own kind, something which we humans are perversely good at. In order to survive, we must spread the human species from off this planet.
Here’s a video, courtesy NASA, of the LCROSS mission and resulting lunar impact by the “Centaur” rocket. You can’t actually see the rocket hit the moon, but it’s still interesting to see the process to get the rocket to the moon itself:
The discovery of water on the moon is powerful, no doubt. Don’t just shuffle it aside as needless fact-gathering. This advance is just as important for scientific cheerleading as it is for powering future technology and off-planet living. This discovery doesn’t just tell us more about our celestial neighborhood. It also gives us the ability to not only know our place in the Universe, but to change it.
I can think of no better way to end this article than with this quote by Carl Sagan:
“The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.”
For those who really like the audio version of that quote, here’s the full video:
Podcast
Support
Email alerts
RSS
Facebook