Sentences with phrase «lunar soil»

However, lunar soil contains these elements — and lots of water!

Another team of researchers led by Leticia Fimiani of the Technical University of Munich also found 60Fe in lunar soil samples collected by Apollo astronauts.

Brown scientists found super-tiny melt inclusions in lunar soil samples that opened the door for measurements that revealed the magnitude of water inside the moon.

In fact, the findings have already caused astrobiologist Daniel Glavin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, to rethink his own research on lunar soils stored at NASA's Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation office, which had detected some α - aminoisobutryic acid.

Astronaut Alan L. Bean, Lunar Module pilot for the Apollo 12 lunar landing mission, holds a container filled with lunar soil collected while exploring the lunar surface.

Those atoms» origin in the ozone layer might also help explain a longstanding mystery about some grains of lunar soil brought back by Apollo astronauts.

Of the many ways to make oxygen from lunar soil, Clark has chosen hydrogen reduction.

But scientists working on a way to harvest oxygen from the iron oxide in lunar soil for future moon bases realized that they happened on a better way to make steel here on Earth.

They have explained how energetic particles penetrating lunar soil can create molecular hydrogen from water ice.

On the walls there is a gorgeous painting of Halley's comet floating over Antarctica in 1986, along with a whimsical illustration of an Apollo - era astronaut on the moon, gazing at Earth and urinating in a graceful arc onto lunar soil.

By microwaving lunar soil, astronauts could weld, or sinter, the particles together to form a serviceable foundation.

As I followed the grainy images of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the dusty lunar soil, I could see the moon peeking through tree branches overhead.

Scientists from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and other international collaborators have proposed a system of mirrors, processed lunar soil and a heat engine to provide energy to vehicles and crew during the lunar night.

«Oxygen production from TiO2 - enhanced lunar soils could potentially make breathable oxygen and even oxidiser for rocket fuel.»

Colaprete said the apparent lack of a plume could say something about the angle at which LCROSS struck the surface or the stiffness of the material at the surface, which could have been soft lunar soil or hard bedrock.

Extremely homogenous composition is nearly impossible to find via remote sensing of the moon, Warren notes, because lunar soil is such a hodgepodge, and it is bound to contaminate any given surface to some extent.

However, the data have also revealed the presence of highly evolved, silica - rich lunar soils in kilometer - scale and larger exposures, expanded the compositional range of the anorthosites that dominate the lunar crust, and shown that pristine lunar mantle is not exposed at the lunar surface at the kilometer scale.

76 The isotope ratios of these elements in lunar soil correspond not to the solar wind but to what is found on Earth77 — suggesting again that they came from Earth.

That paper focused on how the scouring of the delicate upper layer of lunar soils could produce brightness consistent with the swirls.

Planting Chinese footprints on lunar soil is now in China's target sights, Johnson - Freese says, after the nation has carefully developed all the necessary capabilities through its Shenzhou and Chang» e programs.

These particles interact with lunar soil, darkening it over thousands of years, except for paler blobs that seemed to have no obvious source.

If scientists can collect and analyze samples of the terrestrial oxygen embedded in lunar soil, it could provide insights into how Earth's atmosphere has evolved over the eons.

Its next moon mission: to return a lunar soil sample in 2017; if it succeeds, it will be the first collected since the last Apollo missions in the 1970s.

Lunar soil is rich in metals like gold and platinum, rare - earth elements, and helium - 3 — all of which could one day be mined.

The study, published in Science Advances, builds on the initial discovery in 2009 of water and a related molecule — hydroxyl, which consists of one atom each of hydrogen and oxygen — in the lunar soil.

These regions have never been exposed to sunlight and have remained at temperatures near absolute zero for billions of years, thus preserving the pristine nature of the lunar soil, or regolith.

«We don't know exactly what the mechanism is for this fluctuation, but it tells us that the process of water formation in the lunar soil is active and happening today,» Milliken said.

«We hope this motivates the planetary community to continue lab experiments to understand the interaction of solar wind with the lunar soil and possible mechanisms for how water migrates across the lunar surface on these relatively short timescales,» he said.

A new map reveals quantities of water trapped in the lunar soil.

«No one has ever had a convincing explanation for how those anomalies could occur in lunar soil,» says Mahesh Anand, a cosmochemist at The Open University in Milton Keynes, U.K.

And perhaps most intriguing, research suggests that Martian and lunar soil could be used to grow crops like wheat and even potatoes.

And even though an estimated 4 trillion trillion trillion atoms of oxygen have become embedded in the lunar soil in the last 2.4 billion years or so, that won't make settling the moon any easier.

Taylor found he could melt a pile of lunar soil in 10 to 20 seconds.Then he focused a single magnetron on another sample: «With 50 watts of energy I took a one - centimeter block of lunar soil to 1700 degrees Celsius (3100 degrees F) in 10 seconds,» he says.

It is conceivable that radiation will cause chain reactions below the surface of the lunar soil, producing fission products from secondary reactions that are even more harmful to human tissue than unshielded bombardment.

The key lies in particles of glass and metallic iron in the lunar soil.

Previous studies have suggested that lunar soil and water ice in certain craters of the moon may be mined and converted to fuel.

«For example, on the moon, there are additional hazards from neutrons that are created by high - energy radiation interacting in the lunar soil and radiating outward from the surface.»

LRO's partner spacecraft, LCROSS, found about 5 percent water - ice in the lunar soil.

«Interestingly, the isotopic opposition of the unknown [oxygen - 16]- poor component of lunar soil is quite identical to that of ozone layer,» Terada said.

It was thought to have been created by protons that stream in from the sun combining with oxygen atoms pried away from minerals in the lunar soil.

Another piece of evidence that this oxygen came from Earth was how far the ions penetrated into the lunar soil, the scientists said.

According to Jeffrey Gillis - Davis, a planetary geologist at the University of Hawaii, the lunar soil may behave differently because its porous, powdery texture may allow it to retain water and hydroxyl better than solid crystals.

In a paper published in the journal Icarus, the researchers use state - of - the - art computer models to simulate the dynamics of comet impacts on the lunar soil.

A spacecraft has uncovered in lunar soil some traces of Earth's ancient atmosphere that were key to the development of complex life

Their new simulations showed that the impact of a comet coma plus its icy core would indeed have the effect of blowing away the smallest grains that sit atop the lunar soil.

«Our new finding is a direct link that ions from Earth's atmosphere are transported to the moon,» where they could remain in the lunar soils for billions of years, Terada says.

The researchers found that a certain kind of oxygen isotope was present in the lunar soil, an isotope that occurs on Earth.

The lunar soil's oxygen content has three components: One is rich in oxygen - 16, and that is from the solar wind.

The next phase of this research will involve investigating whether other instruments aboard LRO could detect evidence for sparking in lunar soil, as well as improving the model to better understand the process and its consequences.