The Moon

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caltrek
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The Moon's Darkest Places Are Permanent Shadows, But Now We Can Peer Into Them
by Michele Starr
August 30, 2022

Introduction:
(Science Alert) It's a common misconception that the Moon has a "dark" side. Like a rotisserie chicken, the Moon's rotation ensures a nice, even sunbathe around its equator.

But there are pockets that never receive any rays: deep craters and pocks at high latitudes, in the Moon's polar regions, with high walls that protect the crater floor from harsh solar radiation.

In these mysterious Moon holes, which maintain freezing temperatures around -163 degrees Celsius (-260 degrees Fahrenheit), scientists believe there may be all sorts of interesting things.

Well, mainly one: water ice, in patches up to several meters thick.

We likely won't know for sure until at least 2024, the year NASA plans to send astronauts up to our li'l lunar buddy to check it out… but in the meantime, scientists have found a way to illuminate those shadowed regions for a sneak peek.


Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/the-moons ... into-them
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raklian
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To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
weatheriscool
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SpaceX’s Starship will carry an SUV-sized rover to the Moon in 2026

While its next-generation rocket has yet to fly, that’s not stopping SpaceX from booking Starship flights. On Friday, a startup named Astrolab revealed that it had recently signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s private space firm to reserve a spot on an uncrewed Starship cargo mission that could launch as early as mid-2026. “This is SpaceX’s first commercial cargo contract to the lunar surface,” Jaret Matthews, CEO of Astrolab, told The New York Times, adding his company was one of a few customers involved in the flight.
https://www.engadget.com/spacexs-starsh ... 26510.html
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Collision May Have Formed the Moon in Mere Hours, Simulations Reveal
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/lunar ... imulations
Billions of years ago, a version of our Earth that looks very different than the one we live on today was hit by an object about the size of Mars, called Theia – and out of that collision the Moon was formed. How exactly that formation occurred is a scientific puzzle researchers have studied for decades, without a conclusive answer.

Most theories claim the Moon formed out of the debris of this collision, coalescing in orbit over months or years. A new simulation puts forth a different theory – the Moon may have formed immediately, in a matter of hours, when material from the Earth and Theia was launched directly into orbit after the impact.

“This opens up a whole new range of possible starting places for the Moon’s evolution,” said Jacob Kegerreis, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and lead author of the paper on these results published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “We went into this project not knowing exactly what the outcomes of these high-resolution simulations would be. So, on top of the big eye-opener that standard resolutions can give you misleading answers, it was extra exciting that the new results could include a tantalisingly Moon-like satellite in orbit."

The simulations used in this research are some of the most detailed of their kind, operating at the highest resolution of any simulation run to study the Moon’s origins or other giant impacts. This extra computational power showed that lower-resolution simulations can miss out on important aspects of these kinds of collisions, allowing researchers to see new behaviors emerge in a way previous studies just couldn’t see.
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Building Telescopes on the Moon Could Transform Astronomy—And It’s Becoming an Achievable Goal
The Moon still has much to tell us about the early solar system. Encouragingly, it also has scientific value as a platform for observational astronomy.
https://gizmodo.com/telescopes-moon-ach ... 1850352064
By
Ian Crawford, The Conversation
Lunar exploration is undergoing a renaissance. Dozens of missions, organised by multiple space agencies—and increasingly by commercial companies—are set to visit the Moon by the end of this decade. Most of these will involve small robotic spacecraft, but NASA’s ambitious Artemis program, aims to return humans to the lunar surface by the middle of the decade.

There are various reasons for all this activity, including geopolitical posturing and the search for lunar resources, such as water-ice at the lunar poles, which can be extracted and turned into hydrogen and oxygen propellant for rockets. However, science is also sure to be a major beneficiary.

The Moon still has much to tell us about the origin and evolution of the solar system. It also has scientific value as a platform for observational astronomy.

The potential role for astronomy of Earth’s natural satellite was discussed at a Royal Society meeting earlier this year. The meeting itself had, in part, been sparked by the enhanced access to the lunar surface now in prospect.
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Re: The Moon

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Please keep exploration of the Moon in the relevant thread, thanks.
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More evidence found showing the moon's inner core is solid, like Earth's
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-evidence- ... earth.html
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org
A small team of astronomers at Université Côte d'Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, working with a colleague from MCCE, Observatoire de Paris, Sorbonne Université, has found more evidence that the moon has an inner core similar to Earth's. In their study, reported in the journal Nature, the group analyzed data from a wide variety of sources and used it to create models depicting the inner parts of the moon

In 2011, planetary scientists at NASA used seismic data recorded by Apollo astronauts to predict what might lie at the center of the moon. They suggested it was likely that there was a solid inner core with a radius of approximately 240 kilometers. In this new effort, the researchers used a variety of sources to make similar estimates and found evidence that matches closely with the NASA results.

To learn more about the moon's core, the research team collected data from several space missions and from several lunar-based ranging experiments. They used that data to create a likely profile for the interior of the moon, including characteristics such as deformations created due to gravitational interactions with the Earth, the moon's distance from Earth and also the moon's density. They then input all of their data into a modeling application. Next, they ran multiple modeling scenarios to see which corresponded most closely with real-world data.

The model that fit most closely to observations revealed evidence of active overturn, where denser material is pulled closer to the core over time, forcing lighter material upward. This finding helps explain how many of the elements found in volcanic regions of the moon got there.
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Time_Traveller
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Israeli startup WeSpace aims to launch robotic 'moon hopper' by 2026
about 22 hours ago

Israeli startup WeSpace Technologies wants to put its robotic footprint on the moon.

The company aims to provide autonomous lunar hopper drones, which will deliver customer payloads to hard-to-reach regions of the moon.

WeSpace was founded in 2019 by CEO Yifat Feffer and chief technology officer Yigal Harel, the latter of whom previously helmed the pioneering Beresheet lunar lander program for the Israeli organization SpaceIL. Beresheet, a four-legged stationary probe, crashed into the moon's surface during its landing attempt in April 2019. Harel and Feffer established WeSpace that same year, with aspirations for a much more complex lunar vehicle.

WeSpace is touting the hopper as a highly capable autonomous spacecraft with the ability to zip around the moon using thrusters to fly from location to location, hover above specific areas or deliver payloads somewhere on the surface — and possibly even beneath it.

The company views the current means of exploring the lunar surface — mainly via rovers — as inadequate to help develop an emerging lunar economy. The company's website lists the spacecraft's advantages over other vehicles, including the ability to explore the moon's underground lava tubes and operate autonomously in permanently shadowed regions, areas thought to be rich in water ice that are, unfortunately, also essentially communication "dark" zones.
https://www.space.com/israeli-startup-w ... =space.com
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