NASA Research Team Reveals Moon Has Earth-Like Core

State-of-the-art seismological techniques applied to Apollo-era data suggest our moon has a core similar to Earth's.

Uncovering details about the lunar core is critical for developing accurate models of the moon's formation. The data sheds light on the evolution of a lunar dynamo -- a natural process by which our moon may have generated and maintained its own strong magnetic field.

The team's findings suggest the moon possesses a solid, iron-rich inner core with a radius of nearly 150 miles and a fluid, primarily liquid-iron outer core with a radius of roughly 205 miles. Where it differs from Earth is a partially molten boundary layer around the core estimated to have a radius of nearly 300 miles. The research indicates the core contains a small percentage of light elements such as sulfur, echoing new seismology research on Earth that suggests the presence of light elements -- such as sulfur and oxygen -- in a layer around our own core.

The researchers used extensive data gathered during the Apollo-era moon missions. The Apollo Passive Seismic Experiment consisted of four seismometers deployed between 1969 and 1972, which recorded continuous lunar seismic activity until late-1977.

NASA's LRO Creating Unprecedented Topographic Map of Moon

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is allowing researchers to create the most precise and complete map to date of the moon's complex, heavily cratered landscape.

"This dataset is being used to make digital elevation and terrain maps that will be a fundamental reference for future scientific and human exploration missions to the moon," said Dr. Gregory Neumann of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "After about one year taking data, we already have nearly 3 billion data points from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter on board the LRO spacecraft, with near-uniform longitudinal coverage. We expect to continue to make measurements at this rate through the next two years of the science phase of the mission and beyond. Near the poles, we expect to provide near-GPS-like navigational capability as coverage is denser due to the spacecraft's polar orbit." Neumann will present the map at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco December 17.

Antarctic Ozone Hole 2010

The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite acquired data for this map of ozone concentrations over Antarctica on September 12, 2010. OMI is a spectrometer that measures the amount of sunlight scattered by Earth’s atmosphere and surface, allowing scientists to assess how much ozone is present at various altitudes — particularly the stratosphere — and near the ground.

So far in 2010, the size and depth of the ozone hole has been slightly below the average for 1979 to 2009, likely because of warmer temperatures in the stratosphere over the far southern hemisphere. However, even slight changes in the meteorology of the region this month could affect the rate of depletion of ozone and how large an area the ozone hole might span. You can follow the progress of the ozone hole by visiting NASA’s Ozone Hole Watch page.

September 16 is the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, a commemoration of the day in 1987 when nations commenced the signing of the Montreal Protocol to limit and eventually ban ozone-depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other chlorine and bromine-containing compounds. The ozone scientific assessment panel for the United Nations Environment Program, which monitors the effectiveness of the Montreal Protocol, is expected to release its latest review of the state of the world’s ozone layer by the end of 2010. (The last assessment was released in 2006.) Newman is one of the four co-chairs of the assessment panel.

Observe the Moon

The moon is the Earth's nearest celestial neighbor and a geologic wonderland. There are mountains that are many miles high, lava flows several hundred miles long and enormous lava tubes and craters of every size. It is the brightest object in the night sky and has profoundly influenced the course of human civilization.

For early humans, the moon provided lighting for hunting and defined when crops should be planted and harvested. Markings of lunar phases appear in cave paintings in France and defined the arrangement of Stonehenge.

The 2010 International "Observe the Moon Night" is happening on Saturday, Sept. 18. On Thursday, Sept. 16, at 3:00 p.m. EDT, Dr. Rob Suggs of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will answer your questions about the moon and National Observe the Moon Night. Joining the chat is easy. Simply return to this page a few minutes before the chat time on Thursday. The chat module will appear at the bottom of this page. After you log in, wait for the chat module to be activated at 3:00, then ask your questions!

Cassini Captures a Divine Dione

Cruising past Saturn's moon Dione this past weekend, NASA's Cassini spacecraft got its best look yet at the north polar region of this small, icy moon and returned stark raw images of the fractured, cratered surface.

The new images also show new views of the long, bright canyon ice walls, which scientists working with NASA's Voyager spacecraft called "wispy terrain" in the early 1980s. These ice walls thread along the surface of the moon's trailing hemisphere and cut across craters.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Launch Preps Move Ahead for Mission to International Space Station

Space shuttle Discovery's airlock, which stands in the forward section of the cargo bay and connects to the crew compartment, will undergo two days of closeout work as the orbiter is prepped for next month's move to the Vehicle Assembly Building for stacking ahead of the targeted Nov. 1 launch on the STS-133 mission. Workers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the processing and launch site for all shuttle missions, are also flushing the piping in the spacecraft's vernier thrusters. In space, the vernier thrusters fire to make small changes to the shuttle's attitude and course.

The STS-133 astronauts are working at their training base at Johnson Space Center in Houston, with a focus today on spacewalk practice in the virtual reality lab.

During space shuttle Discovery's final spaceflight, the STS-133 crew members will take important spare parts to the International Space Station along with the Express Logistics Carrier-4. Discovery is being readied for flight inside Kennedy's Orbiter Processing Facility-3 while its solid rocket boosters are stacked inside the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building. STS-133 is slated to launch Nov. 1.

Moon Work Design Contest Offers NASA Internships to Winners

Talented engineering students who have ideas on how future explorers might live on the moon could find themselves working at NASA as paid interns.

The 2010 NASA Moon Work engineering design challenge seeks to motivate college students by giving them first-hand experience with the process of developing new technologies. To participate in the contest, students will submit their original design for tools or instruments that can help astronauts live and work on the moon. Top-ranked students will be offered a chance to intern with a team from NASA's Exploration Technology Development Program.

The Exploration Technology Development Program develops new technologies that will enable NASA to conduct future human exploration missions while reducing mission risk and cost. The program is maturing near-term technologies to help enable the first flight of the Orion crew exploration vehicle and developing long-lead technologies needed for possible lunar exploration missions.

Winning Moon Work contestants also will have a chance to attend field tests conducted by the Desert Research and Technology Studies Program, managed by NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The program conducts annual tests of new technologies in landscapes that are close analogs of the moon and other harsh space environments.

Students should submit a notice of intent to enter the contest by Dec. 15. Final entries for the Moon Work challenge are due May 15, 2010. All entries must be from students at U.S. colleges or universities. Although non-citizens may be part of a team, only U.S. citizens may win NASA internships or travel awards.

Lunar Regolith Challenge

Nineteen teams pushed their robot competitors to the limit, and three teams claimed a total of $750,000 in NASA prizes at this year's Regolith Excavation Challenge on Oct. 17-18. This is the first time in the competition's three-year history that any team qualified for a cash prize, the largest NASA has awarded to date.

After two days of intense competition hosted at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., organizers conferred first place prize of $500,000 to Paul's Robotics of Worcester, Mass. Terra Engineering of Gardena, Calif., was a three-time returning competitor and was awarded second place prize of $150,000, and Team Braundo of Rancho Palos Verde, Calif., took the third place of $100,000 as a first-time competitor.

Competitors were required to use mobile, robotic digging machines capable of excavating at least 330 pounds of simulated moon dirt, known as regolith, and depositing it into a container in 30 minutes or less. The rules required the remotely controlled vehicles to contain their own power sources and weigh no more than 176 pounds.

The winning excavator lifted 1,103 pounds within the allotted time. Runners-up excavated 595 pounds and 580 pounds, respectively. Team E-REX of Little Rock, Ark., earned a special mention for transferring the most regolith in a single deposit -- 165 pounds.

Shown here is the Braundo Rancho excavator digging up simulated lunar dust, known as regolith.

Fresh Rim of Slipher S

Distinctive asymmetrical ejecta surrounds a 140 meter (459 feet) diameter crater in the lunar highlands. The distinctive wave-like texture may look a little bit like a terrestrial beach, but it's actually impact ejecta on the rim of the crater Slipher S (26 km diameter), which is located on the lunar farside at the edge of the larger and older crater Slipher. Notice that there are only a few small craters dotting the surface, and so the rim is well preserved. To a lunar geologist, the lack of impact degradation on a surface like this one indicates a (relatively) young age, and in fact this crater is currently mapped as an Eratosthenian-aged crater. You are actually looking at some of the deepest materials excavated by this crater. When impact craters form, the rocks excavated from the deepest parts of the crater actually fall near the rim. In effect nature is providing a drill hole to the subsurface bringing deep rocks right to the surface.

Inside Job

In the Vehicle Assembly Building's High Bay 3 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a technician works on a platform mounted on the interior wall of the upper stage simulator of the 327-foot-tall Ares I-X rocket.

Liquid Methane Tank

It's not a new home brewing system, the world's largest holiday ornament or even an ambitious Death Star model. This spherical propellant tank is an important component of testing for the Altair lunar lander, an integral part of NASA's Constellation Program. This 4-foot diameter propellant tank lives at NASA's Glenn Research Center's Small Multipurpose Research Facility (SMiRF). It will be covered in 60 layers of high performance insulation, filled with liquid methane and extensively tested in a simulated lunar thermal environment within the SMiRF vacuum chamber. Determining how liquid methane would react to being stored on the moon could dramatically influence lunar travel; this method holds the potential to be less expensive, higher performing and safer than current rocket propellants.

Diviner Observes LCROSS Impact

The LRO Diviner instrument obtained infrared observations of the LCROSS impact. LRO flew by the LCROSS Centaur impact site 90 seconds after impact at a distance of ~80 km. Diviner was commanded to observe the impact site on eight successive orbits, and obtained a series of thermal maps before and after the impact at approximately two hour intervals at an angle of approximately 48 degrees off nadir. In this viewing geometry, the spatial footprint of each Diviner detector was roughly 300 by 700 meters.


Figure 1 shows the locations of the Diviner LCROSS impact swaths overlain on a grayscale daytime thermal map of the Moon’s south polar region. Diviner data were used to help select the final LCROSS impact site inside Cabeus Crater, which sampled an extremely cold region in permanent shadow that can serve as an effective cold trap for water ice and other frozen volatiles. Credit NASA/GSFC/UCLA


Figure 2 shows preliminary, uncalibrated Diviner thermal maps of the impact site acquired two hours before the impact, and 90 seconds after the impact. The thermal signature of the impact was clearly detected in all four Diviner thermal mapping channels. Since the LCROSS impact feature is predicted to be significantly smaller than a Diviner footprint, its detection is consistent with the notion that the LCROSS impact resulted in significant local heating of the lunar surface. Credit NASA/GSFC/UCLA

Closer Moon View

A closer view of the moon as the LCROSS spacecraft approaches impact.

Post Impact Press Conference

The LCROSS Centaur and Spacecraft impacted the moon at approximately 4:30 a.m. PDT. Scientists are reviewing the initial data and will report what they know at a Post Impact News Conference at 7:00 a.m. PDT / 10:00 a.m. EDT on NASA TV.

Data Assessment

The LCROSS science team is making their preliminary assessment of approximately four minutes of data collected from the LCROSS Spacecraft. Observatories involved in the LCROSS Observation Campaign are reporting in.

LCROSS Coverage

Live coverage of LCROSS Impact Event starts at 3:15 a.m. PDT or 6:15 a.m. EDT on NASA TV http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Breaking Maneuver

Mission operations is initiating the breaking maneuver. This will create the 4 minute, 373 mile (600 km) separation planned for optimal data of the Centaur Impact Flash and debris plume. The breaking burn is 4 min 5 sec. in duration.

Successful Centaur Separation Mission Update

At 6:50 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 8 the LCROSS shepherding spacecraft successfully separated from the Centaur that is has been attached to since early June 2009, when the LCROSS and LRO were stacked at Space Launch Complex 41, a few days before launch from Cape Canaveral. After the separation sequence was initiated, sensors attached to three break wires indicated a successful separation.

After the separation, the LCROSS shepherding spacecraft completed a 180 degree flip maneuver and powered up the science payload to watch the Centaur steadily increase the distance between them. Mission operations then commanded the spacecraft to perform a breaking burn to create a separation distance of 600 km from the Centaur, This was determined by the science team as the optimal distance to view the Centaur on the surface of the moon.

The Centaur will impact the floor of Cabeus crater at 4:31:19 a.m. PDT. Following about 4 minutes behind and collecting and transmitting data back to LCROSS mission control, the Shepherding spacecraft will impact the surface at approximately 4:35:45 a.m. PDT.

Centaur Separation

The mission operations team has initiated the Centaur separation sequence. The tripping of 3 breakwire sensors will be the most immediate indication of a successful separation. After verification by the mission operations team, the spacecraft will perform a 180 degree pitch maneuver (turning around) to reorient the LCROSS sciene payload towards the receding Centaur. This is the first maneuver performed by the LCROSS spacecraft in a detached configuration. The maneuver takes approximately three minutes.

Targeting Accuracy Requirement

The LCROSS mission has a targeting accuracy requirement of a 12.4 mile (20km) circle, however the team has managed to greatly improve that accuracy to better than a 2.17 mile (3.5 km) circle.