Evidence of water found on moon

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The ocean is a potentially vast source of electric power, yet as engineers test new technologies for capturing it, the devices are plagued by battering storms, limited efficiency, and the need to be tethered to the seafloor.

Shown is the view from the far downstream end into the test section of the U.S. Air Force Academy water tunnel. Three blades of the cycloidal turbine are visible at the far end. Engineer Stefan Siegel and his colleagues test the turbine using the tunnel, with both steady and oscillating flow conditions simulating a shallow-water wave-flow field. (Credit: SSgt Danny Washburn, U.S. Air Force Academy, Department of Aeronautics)

Shown is the view from the far downstream end into the test section of the U.S. Air Force Academy water tunnel. Three blades of the cycloidal turbine are visible at the far end. Engineer Stefan Siegel and his colleagues test the turbine using the tunnel, with both steady and oscillating flow conditions simulating a shallow-water wave-flow field. (Credit: SSgt Danny Washburn, U.S. Air Force Academy, Department of Aeronautics)

Now, a team of aerospace engineers is applying the principles that keep airplanes aloft to create a new wave-energy system that is durable, extremely efficient, and can be placed anywhere in the ocean, regardless of depth.

While still in early design stages, computer and scale-model tests of the system suggest higher efficiencies than wind turbines. The system is designed to effectively cancel incoming waves, capturing their energy while flattening them out, providing an added application as a storm-wave breaker.

The researchers, from the U.S. Air Force Academy, will present their design at the 62nd annual meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics on Nov. 24, 2009, in Minneapolis, Minn.

“Our group was working on very basic research on feedback flow control for years,” says lead researcher Stefan Siegel, referring to efforts to use sensors and adjustable parts to control how fluids flow around airfoils like wings. “For an airplane, when you control that flow, you better control flight–for example, enabling you to land a plane on a shorter runway.”

A colleague had read an article on wave energy in a magazine and mentioned it to Siegel and the other team members, and they realized they could operate a wave energy device using the same feedback control concepts they had been developing.

Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, the researchers developed a system that uses lift instead of drag to cause the propeller blades to move.

“Every airplane flies with lift, not with drag,” says Siegel. “Compare an old style windmill with a modern one. The new style uses lift and is what made wind energy viable–and it doesn’t get shredded in a storm like an old windmill. Fluid dynamics fixed the issue for windmills, and can do the same for wave energy.”

Windmills have active controls that turn the blades to compensate for storm winds, eliminating lift when it is a risk, and preventing damage.

The Air Force Academy researchers used the same approach with a hydrofoil (equivalent to an airfoil, but for water) and built it into a cycloidal propeller, a design that emerged in the 1930s and currently propels tugboats, ferries and other highly maneuverable ships.

The researchers changed the propeller orientation from horizontal to vertical, allowing direct interaction with the cyclic, up and down motion of wave energy. The researchers also developed individual control systems for each propeller blade, allowing sophisticated manipulations that maximize (or minimize, in the case of storms) interaction with wave energy.

Ultimately, the goal is to keep the flow direction and blade direction constant, cancelling the incoming wave and using standard gear-driven or direct-drive generators to convert the wave energy into electric energy. A propeller that is exactly out of phase with a wave will cancel that wave and maximize energy output.

The cancellation will also allow the float-mounted devices to function without the need of mooring, important for deep-sea locations that hold tremendous wave energy potential and are currently out of reach for many existing wave energy designs.

While the final device may be as large as 40 meters across, laboratory models are currently less than a meter in diameter. A larger version of the system will be tested next year at NSF’s Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) tsunami wave basin at Oregon State University, an important experiment for proving the efficacy of the design.

The conference takes place from Nov. 22-24, 2009, at the Minneapolis Convention Center. The conference is the year’s largest devoted to fluid dynamics, bringing together researchers from across the world and across a wide range of disciplines.

The talk, “Deep Ocean Wave Cancellation Using a Cycloidal Turbine” is by Stefan Siegel, Tiger Jeans, and Thomas McLaughlin of the U.S. Air Force Academy.

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The ocean is a potentially vast source of electric power, yet as engineers test new technologies for capturing it, the devices are plagued by battering storms, limited efficiency, and the need to be tethered to the seafloor.

Shown is the view from the far downstream end into the test section of the U.S. Air Force Academy water tunnel. Three blades of the cycloidal turbine are visible at the far end. Engineer Stefan Siegel and his colleagues test the turbine using the tunnel, with both steady and oscillating flow conditions simulating a shallow-water wave-flow field. (Credit: SSgt Danny Washburn, U.S. Air Force Academy, Department of Aeronautics)

Shown is the view from the far downstream end into the test section of the U.S. Air Force Academy water tunnel. Three blades of the cycloidal turbine are visible at the far end. Engineer Stefan Siegel and his colleagues test the turbine using the tunnel, with both steady and oscillating flow conditions simulating a shallow-water wave-flow field. (Credit: SSgt Danny Washburn, U.S. Air Force Academy, Department of Aeronautics)

Now, a team of aerospace engineers is applying the principles that keep airplanes aloft to create a new wave-energy system that is durable, extremely efficient, and can be placed anywhere in the ocean, regardless of depth.

While still in early design stages, computer and scale-model tests of the system suggest higher efficiencies than wind turbines. The system is designed to effectively cancel incoming waves, capturing their energy while flattening them out, providing an added application as a storm-wave breaker.

The researchers, from the U.S. Air Force Academy, will present their design at the 62nd annual meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics on Nov. 24, 2009, in Minneapolis, Minn.

“Our group was working on very basic research on feedback flow control for years,” says lead researcher Stefan Siegel, referring to efforts to use sensors and adjustable parts to control how fluids flow around airfoils like wings. “For an airplane, when you control that flow, you better control flight–for example, enabling you to land a plane on a shorter runway.”

A colleague had read an article on wave energy in a magazine and mentioned it to Siegel and the other team members, and they realized they could operate a wave energy device using the same feedback control concepts they had been developing.

Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, the researchers developed a system that uses lift instead of drag to cause the propeller blades to move.

“Every airplane flies with lift, not with drag,” says Siegel. “Compare an old style windmill with a modern one. The new style uses lift and is what made wind energy viable–and it doesn’t get shredded in a storm like an old windmill. Fluid dynamics fixed the issue for windmills, and can do the same for wave energy.”

Windmills have active controls that turn the blades to compensate for storm winds, eliminating lift when it is a risk, and preventing damage.

The Air Force Academy researchers used the same approach with a hydrofoil (equivalent to an airfoil, but for water) and built it into a cycloidal propeller, a design that emerged in the 1930s and currently propels tugboats, ferries and other highly maneuverable ships.

The researchers changed the propeller orientation from horizontal to vertical, allowing direct interaction with the cyclic, up and down motion of wave energy. The researchers also developed individual control systems for each propeller blade, allowing sophisticated manipulations that maximize (or minimize, in the case of storms) interaction with wave energy.

Ultimately, the goal is to keep the flow direction and blade direction constant, cancelling the incoming wave and using standard gear-driven or direct-drive generators to convert the wave energy into electric energy. A propeller that is exactly out of phase with a wave will cancel that wave and maximize energy output.

The cancellation will also allow the float-mounted devices to function without the need of mooring, important for deep-sea locations that hold tremendous wave energy potential and are currently out of reach for many existing wave energy designs.

While the final device may be as large as 40 meters across, laboratory models are currently less than a meter in diameter. A larger version of the system will be tested next year at NSF’s Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) tsunami wave basin at Oregon State University, an important experiment for proving the efficacy of the design.

The conference takes place from Nov. 22-24, 2009, at the Minneapolis Convention Center. The conference is the year’s largest devoted to fluid dynamics, bringing together researchers from across the world and across a wide range of disciplines.

The talk, “Deep Ocean Wave Cancellation Using a Cycloidal Turbine” is by Stefan Siegel, Tiger Jeans, and Thomas McLaughlin of the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Start uga_filter:

Scientists announced tonight that they have discovered “buckets” of water on the Moon following the analysis of data from a spacecraft that was deliberately crashed into a lunar crater last month.


The researchers said the evidence for the existence of significant bodies of water ice hidden in polar craters on the Moon is “definitive” and that the total quantities could be big enough to support a permanently-manned lunar base.

It is the first time that the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) has been so categorical about the discovery of water on the Moon. Previous studies had only suggested that the presence of water might be possible and then only in trace amounts.

However, a painstakingly detailed analysis of the data from the LCROSS spacecraft, which was deliberately crashed into the Cabeus crater near the Lunar South Pole, has revealed a definitive chemical signature of water vapour in the plume of dust and debris that was released on impact.

In just one crater, the team estimates that there was at least 100 kilograms of water, enough to fill a dozen, two-gallon buckets. If similar amounts of water exist in other polar craters permanently shaded from sunlight there could be enough water available on the Moon to be used as drinking water for a lunar base – or used as a source of rocket fuel.

Anthony Colaprete, the principal scientist of LCROSS (the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite), said that the “eureka moment” came when the team saw a spectroscopic line indicating the presence of the OH water molecule, which could only exist if water was present in the crater.

“What we found was indeed water…We vetted it, vetted it, vetted it, vetted it and vetted it some more as a team…I’m pretty impressed by the amount of water we see in this small, 20-metre crater,” Dr Colaprete said at a press briefing from Nasa’s Ames Research Centre in California.

“It’s safe to say it’s not a frozen lake with a perfectly frozen surface. It was probably mixed in with the surface. It would be an interesting place to walk around,” Dr Colaprete said.

Mike Wargo from Nasa said: “We’ve discovered significant quantities of water in a permanently-shaded crater on the Moon. We’re not just talking of water on the Moon, but lots of water.”

When LCROSS was crashed into the Moon, it was expected to eject a visible plume of debris six-miles high that was supposed to have been visible from Earth. However, Nasa scientists said at the time that the absence of a visible plume did not mean that the mission was a failure.

Nasa’s Gregory Delory said that the discovery is one of the most exciting to be made in connection with lunar exploration. “If we find water in large enough amounts it could be used as a resource for human exploration,” Dr Delory said.

“Now we know there’s water there thanks to LCROSS we can go to the next set of questions. It’s a new picture of the Moon. It’s going to be a very exciting time,” he said.

One of the unresolved questions is how the water could have got to the Moon. One theory is that it arrived on a comet and never evaporated in the shaded polar craters where temperatures are minus 220C.

Another possibility is that the water arrived on a solar wind, which is a stream of ionised hydrogen gas. A third theory is that is was dropped by a molecular cloud, or dropped by ice-laden cosmic dust. It might even be terrestrial water kicked up from Earth in a gigantic asteroid impact.

Nasa estimates that there are 12,500 square kilometres of permanently-shadowed terrain on the Moon and if the top 1 metre of this area were to hold just 1 per cent by mass of water, this would still produce thousands of litres of water.

It is not the first time that spacecraft have crashed into the Moon. In 1998, Nasa’s Lunar Prospector mission was deliberately crashed into a crater, which confirmed the presence of hydrogen, which may or may not have come from ancient stores of frozen water deposited in lunar craters over billions of years by passing comets.

By Steve Connor

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Scientists announced tonight that they have discovered “buckets” of water on the Moon following the analysis of data from a spacecraft that was deliberately crashed into a lunar crater last month.


The researchers said the evidence for the existence of significant bodies of water ice hidden in polar craters on the Moon is “definitive” and that the total quantities could be big enough to support a permanently-manned lunar base.

It is the first time that the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) has been so categorical about the discovery of water on the Moon. Previous studies had only suggested that the presence of water might be possible and then only in trace amounts.

However, a painstakingly detailed analysis of the data from the LCROSS spacecraft, which was deliberately crashed into the Cabeus crater near the Lunar South Pole, has revealed a definitive chemical signature of water vapour in the plume of dust and debris that was released on impact.

In just one crater, the team estimates that there was at least 100 kilograms of water, enough to fill a dozen, two-gallon buckets. If similar amounts of water exist in other polar craters permanently shaded from sunlight there could be enough water available on the Moon to be used as drinking water for a lunar base – or used as a source of rocket fuel.

Anthony Colaprete, the principal scientist of LCROSS (the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite), said that the “eureka moment” came when the team saw a spectroscopic line indicating the presence of the OH water molecule, which could only exist if water was present in the crater.

“What we found was indeed water…We vetted it, vetted it, vetted it, vetted it and vetted it some more as a team…I’m pretty impressed by the amount of water we see in this small, 20-metre crater,” Dr Colaprete said at a press briefing from Nasa’s Ames Research Centre in California.

“It’s safe to say it’s not a frozen lake with a perfectly frozen surface. It was probably mixed in with the surface. It would be an interesting place to walk around,” Dr Colaprete said.

Mike Wargo from Nasa said: “We’ve discovered significant quantities of water in a permanently-shaded crater on the Moon. We’re not just talking of water on the Moon, but lots of water.”

When LCROSS was crashed into the Moon, it was expected to eject a visible plume of debris six-miles high that was supposed to have been visible from Earth. However, Nasa scientists said at the time that the absence of a visible plume did not mean that the mission was a failure.

Nasa’s Gregory Delory said that the discovery is one of the most exciting to be made in connection with lunar exploration. “If we find water in large enough amounts it could be used as a resource for human exploration,” Dr Delory said.

“Now we know there’s water there thanks to LCROSS we can go to the next set of questions. It’s a new picture of the Moon. It’s going to be a very exciting time,” he said.

One of the unresolved questions is how the water could have got to the Moon. One theory is that it arrived on a comet and never evaporated in the shaded polar craters where temperatures are minus 220C.

Another possibility is that the water arrived on a solar wind, which is a stream of ionised hydrogen gas. A third theory is that is was dropped by a molecular cloud, or dropped by ice-laden cosmic dust. It might even be terrestrial water kicked up from Earth in a gigantic asteroid impact.

Nasa estimates that there are 12,500 square kilometres of permanently-shadowed terrain on the Moon and if the top 1 metre of this area were to hold just 1 per cent by mass of water, this would still produce thousands of litres of water.

It is not the first time that spacecraft have crashed into the Moon. In 1998, Nasa’s Lunar Prospector mission was deliberately crashed into a crater, which confirmed the presence of hydrogen, which may or may not have come from ancient stores of frozen water deposited in lunar craters over billions of years by passing comets.

By Steve Connor

Start uga_filter:

NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft has made it possible for scientists to construct the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and its location in the Milky Way galaxy. The new view will change the way researchers view and study the interaction between our galaxy and sun.

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission science team has used data from NASAs IBEX spacecraft to construct the first-ever all-sky map of the interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system, where the suns influence diminishes and interacts with the interstellar medium. Among the findings is an unexpectedly bright ribbon-like emission. (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio)

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission science team has used data from NASA's IBEX spacecraft to construct the first-ever all-sky map of the interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system, where the sun's influence diminishes and interacts with the interstellar medium. Among the findings is an unexpectedly bright ribbon-like emission. (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio)

The sky map was produced with data that two detectors on the spacecraft collected during six months of observations. The detectors measured and counted particles scientists refer to as energetic neutral atoms.

The energetic neutral atoms are created in an area of our solar system known as the interstellar boundary region. This region is where charged particles from the sun, called the solar wind, flow outward far beyond the orbits of the planets and collide with material between stars. The energetic neutral atoms travel inward toward the sun from interstellar space at velocities ranging from 100,000 mph to more than 2.4 million mph. This interstellar boundary emits no light that can be collected by conventional telescopes.

The new map reveals the region that separates the nearest reaches of our galaxy, called the local interstellar medium, from our heliosphere — a protective bubble that shields and protects our solar system from most of the dangerous cosmic radiation traveling through space.

“For the first time, we’re sticking our heads out of the sun’s atmosphere and beginning to really understand our place in the galaxy,” said David J. McComas, IBEX principal investigator and assistant vice president of the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “The IBEX results are truly remarkable, with a narrow ribbon of bright details or emissions not resembling any of the current theoretical models of this region.”

NASA released the sky map image Oct. 15 in conjunction with publication of the findings in the journal Science. The IBEX data were complemented and extended by information collected using an imaging instrument sensor on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Cassini has been observing Saturn, its moons and rings since the spacecraft entered the planet’s orbit in 2004.

The IBEX sky maps also put observations from NASA’s Voyager spacecraft into context. The twin Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977, traveled to the outer solar system to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. In 2007, Voyager 2 followed Voyager 1 into the interstellar boundary. Both spacecraft are now in the midst of this region where the energetic neutral atoms originate. However, the IBEX results show a ribbon of bright emissions undetected by the two Voyagers.

“The Voyagers are providing ground truth, but they’re missing the most exciting region,” said Eric Christian, the IBEX deputy mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “It’s like having two weather stations that miss the big storm that runs between them.”

The IBEX spacecraft was launched in October 2008. Its science objective was to discover the nature of the interactions between the solar wind and the interstellar medium at the edge of our solar system. The Southwest Research Institute developed and leads the mission with a team of national and international partners. The spacecraft is the latest in NASA’s series of low-cost, rapidly developed Small Explorers Program. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages the program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA and the European and Italian Space Agencies. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., provides overall management for Cassini and the Voyagers for the Science Mission Directorate.

To view the sky map and for more information about IBEX, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ibex

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NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft has made it possible for scientists to construct the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and its location in the Milky Way galaxy. The new view will change the way researchers view and study the interaction between our galaxy and sun.

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission science team has used data from NASAs IBEX spacecraft to construct the first-ever all-sky map of the interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system, where the suns influence diminishes and interacts with the interstellar medium. Among the findings is an unexpectedly bright ribbon-like emission. (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio)

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission science team has used data from NASA's IBEX spacecraft to construct the first-ever all-sky map of the interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system, where the sun's influence diminishes and interacts with the interstellar medium. Among the findings is an unexpectedly bright ribbon-like emission. (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio)

The sky map was produced with data that two detectors on the spacecraft collected during six months of observations. The detectors measured and counted particles scientists refer to as energetic neutral atoms.

The energetic neutral atoms are created in an area of our solar system known as the interstellar boundary region. This region is where charged particles from the sun, called the solar wind, flow outward far beyond the orbits of the planets and collide with material between stars. The energetic neutral atoms travel inward toward the sun from interstellar space at velocities ranging from 100,000 mph to more than 2.4 million mph. This interstellar boundary emits no light that can be collected by conventional telescopes.

The new map reveals the region that separates the nearest reaches of our galaxy, called the local interstellar medium, from our heliosphere — a protective bubble that shields and protects our solar system from most of the dangerous cosmic radiation traveling through space.

“For the first time, we’re sticking our heads out of the sun’s atmosphere and beginning to really understand our place in the galaxy,” said David J. McComas, IBEX principal investigator and assistant vice president of the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “The IBEX results are truly remarkable, with a narrow ribbon of bright details or emissions not resembling any of the current theoretical models of this region.”

NASA released the sky map image Oct. 15 in conjunction with publication of the findings in the journal Science. The IBEX data were complemented and extended by information collected using an imaging instrument sensor on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Cassini has been observing Saturn, its moons and rings since the spacecraft entered the planet’s orbit in 2004.

The IBEX sky maps also put observations from NASA’s Voyager spacecraft into context. The twin Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977, traveled to the outer solar system to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. In 2007, Voyager 2 followed Voyager 1 into the interstellar boundary. Both spacecraft are now in the midst of this region where the energetic neutral atoms originate. However, the IBEX results show a ribbon of bright emissions undetected by the two Voyagers.

“The Voyagers are providing ground truth, but they’re missing the most exciting region,” said Eric Christian, the IBEX deputy mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “It’s like having two weather stations that miss the big storm that runs between them.”

The IBEX spacecraft was launched in October 2008. Its science objective was to discover the nature of the interactions between the solar wind and the interstellar medium at the edge of our solar system. The Southwest Research Institute developed and leads the mission with a team of national and international partners. The spacecraft is the latest in NASA’s series of low-cost, rapidly developed Small Explorers Program. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages the program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA and the European and Italian Space Agencies. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., provides overall management for Cassini and the Voyagers for the Science Mission Directorate.

To view the sky map and for more information about IBEX, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ibex

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