Moon may have bucketloads of water!

March 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, March 20 (ANI): If reports are to be believed, the Moon may have bucketloads of water, with a NASA release indicating the amount of water ice detected in the north lunar pole as 600 million metric tons, stashed away in 40 craters.

This new announcement comes hot on the tail of a series of water discoveries on the lunar surface.

According to a report in Discovery News, this latest discovery comes from an instrument that was carried aboard the Indian Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter before it was lost in August, 2009.

NASA’s Mini-SAR team found these 40 craters each containing water ice at least 2 meters deep.

“If you converted those craters’ water into rocket fuel, you’d have enough fuel to launch the equivalent of one space shuttle per day for more than 2000 years,” said Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute.

The excitement surrounding this discovery is tangible, but Spudis pointed out another intriguing possibility: Does the moon have its own water cycle?

“So far, we’ve found three types of moonwater,” said Spudis.

“We have Mini-SAR”s thick lenses of nearly pure crater ice, LCROSS’s fluffy mix of ice crystals and dirt, and M-cube’s thin layer that comes and goes all across the surface of the Moon,” he added.

The moon does appear to contain three different “flavors” of water ice.

Some pure water appears to have been deposited on the lunar surface (perhaps by passing comets).

Some appears to have formed under the surface, mixing with lunar material. And the rest appears to have been formed on the surface through interactions with the solar wind.

Amazingly, these preliminary results indicate that there is also a migration of water from equatorial regions to the lunar poles, pointing to some kind of water cycle.

Scientists are now seriously contemplating a lunar “hydrosphere.” (ANI)

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NASA radar aboard Chandrayaan-1 finds ice on moon’s north pole

March 8, 2010 By Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON: A NASA radar aboard India’s maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 has detected craters filled with thick deposits of ice near the moon’s north pole, the US space agency said on Tuesday.

NASA’s Mini-Sar experiment found more than 40 small craters, ranging in size from one to nine miles, containing water ice.

“Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater, it’s estimated there could be at least 600 million metric tons of water ice,” the space agency said in a statement.

The radar’s findings “show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought,” said Paul Spudis, lead investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.

The Mini-SAR has spent the last year mapping the moon’s permanently-shadowed polar craters that are not visible from Earth, using the polarization properties of reflected radio waves.

“After analysing the data, our science team determined a strong indication of water ice, a finding which will give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit,” Jason Crusan of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington said.

India’s Prof J N Goswami and Dr M Chakrabarty are among the scientists from 13 agencies from the USA and India who authored and published the Mini-SAR’s findings in the journal, “Geophysical Research Letters”.

Prof Goswami is Principal Scientist, Chandrayaan-1 from Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmadabad, and Dr Chakrabarty is from Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad.

Analysis of data obtained by the Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini-SAR) onboard Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has provided evidence of presence of ice deposits near the moon’s North pole.

The new findings add to the growing scientific understanding of the multiple forms of water on the moon, according to an ISRO statement.

Chandrayaan-1 was India’s contribution to the armada of unmanned spacecraft to have been launched to the Moon in recent years.

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New evidence points towards water on Moon

September 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, September 19 (ANI): Two separate lunar missions have found evidence which indicates that the polar regions of the moon are chock full of water-altered minerals.

According to a report in Nature News, early results from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), launched on June 18, are offering a wide array of watery signals.

The Moon, in fact, has water in all sorts of places: not just locked up in minerals, but scattered throughout the broken-up surface, and, potentially, in blocks or sheets of ice at depth.

“We are on the verge of a renaissance in our thinking about the poles of the Moon, including how water ice gets there,” said Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which on October 9, will slam into a polar crater with the intention of ploughing up a plume of water ice for many telescopic eyes to see.

The initial LRO results confirm what was long suspected as a way for ice to stay trapped on the Moon for billions of years.

A thermal mapping instrument showed that permanently shadowed regions within deep polar craters are as cold as 35o Kelvin (-238o Celsius).

Project scientist Richard Vondrak said that they are the coldest spots in the Solar System – even colder than the surface of Pluto.

Variations in the flux of neutrons suggests variability in water content among craters.

But, the surprise comes from a different instrument on LRO, which counts slow-moving neutrons as a way of measuring hydrogen abundance in the top metre or so of the surface.

This hydrogen is often interpreted as a proxy for water ice, although it could also be molecular hydrogen or hydrogen trapped in other molecules.

The LRO instrument has already found a significant excess of hydrogen at the poles.

But, with added resolution, it is seeing surprising variability within the polar regions. Some of the craters appear enriched in hydrogen. Others are not.

Stranger still, some areas outside the crater walls, which were thought to get too hot for water to linger, show an excess of hydrogen.

Vondrak said this shows that the water could have arrived more recently, or that it can persist if buried as impacts till the lunar soil.

If the LCROSS impact spews up ice, it will eliminate the last vestiges of doubt about water on the Moon.

It could also start a new hunt: to find a record of impact events, such as water-rich comet strikes, that put the ice there in the first place. (ANI)

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New evidence points towards water on Moon

September 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, September 19 (ANI): Two separate lunar missions have found evidence which indicates that the polar regions of the moon are chock full of water-altered minerals.

According to a report in Nature News, early results from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), launched on June 18, are offering a wide array of watery signals.

The Moon, in fact, has water in all sorts of places: not just locked up in minerals, but scattered throughout the broken-up surface, and, potentially, in blocks or sheets of ice at depth.

“We are on the verge of a renaissance in our thinking about the poles of the Moon, including how water ice gets there,” said Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which on October 9, will slam into a polar crater with the intention of ploughing up a plume of water ice for many telescopic eyes to see.

The initial LRO results confirm what was long suspected as a way for ice to stay trapped on the Moon for billions of years.

A thermal mapping instrument showed that permanently shadowed regions within deep polar craters are as cold as 35o Kelvin (-238o Celsius).

Project scientist Richard Vondrak said that they are the coldest spots in the Solar System – even colder than the surface of Pluto.

Variations in the flux of neutrons suggests variability in water content among craters.

But, the surprise comes from a different instrument on LRO, which counts slow-moving neutrons as a way of measuring hydrogen abundance in the top metre or so of the surface.

This hydrogen is often interpreted as a proxy for water ice, although it could also be molecular hydrogen or hydrogen trapped in other molecules.

The LRO instrument has already found a significant excess of hydrogen at the poles.

But, with added resolution, it is seeing surprising variability within the polar regions. Some of the craters appear enriched in hydrogen. Others are not.

Stranger still, some areas outside the crater walls, which were thought to get too hot for water to linger, show an excess of hydrogen.

Vondrak said this shows that the water could have arrived more recently, or that it can persist if buried as impacts till the lunar soil.

If the LCROSS impact spews up ice, it will eliminate the last vestiges of doubt about water on the Moon.

It could also start a new hunt: to find a record of impact events, such as water-rich comet strikes, that put the ice there in the first place. (ANI)

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India’s Chandrayaan-1 and NASA join hands to search for water on the moon

August 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, August 26 (ANI): A joint collaboration between India’s Chandrayaan-1 and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which are orbiting the moon, could turn up evidence for valuable lunar water.

Some scientists suspect water ice, which would be a precious resource for future explorers, may be trapped in permanently shadowed craters at the moon’s poles.

Water ice can be distinguished from other materials by the way its radar echoes vary according to the position of the listener.

In 1994, the US Clementine spacecraft bounced radar signals off the moon and found hints of the water-ice signature.

But, it listened for the reflections jointly with a radio observatory on Earth, and getting unambiguous evidence for water requires more closely spaced listening posts.

According to a report in New Scientist, a recent joint experiment involving the US and Indian space agencies has provided a unique opportunity to get that data.

“It’s a unique experiment that can only be conducted by two spacecraft in orbit at the same time,” said Jason Crusan of NASA headquarters in Washington, DC.

On August 20, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Chandrayaan-1 were manoeuvred to within a few dozen kilometres of each other, which required close communication and coordination between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

Once in proper formation, Chandrayaan-1 fired its radar beam at a crater near the moon’s north pole, while both spacecraft listened for the echoes.

Crusan said that scientists were still analyzing the data to make sure the experiment worked, but added that both spacecraft were in the right positions at the right time for it to go as planned.

This is probably the only time the two spacecraft will perform this kind of joint radar measurement, since LRO will soon move to a lower orbit than Chandrayaan-1 in order to begin its main observing phase.

But last week’s experiment marks a new level of space cooperation between the US and India.

“I hope this is a sign of the future for how we will do cooperative exploration,” Crusan said. “I think it’s a good first step,” he added. (ANI)

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Tiger stripes on Enceladus a result of its unusual chemical composition

July 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Melbourne, July 16 (ANI): A new study has revealed that the tiger stripes and a subsurface ocean on Enceladus – one of Saturn’s many moons, are a result of the natural satellite’s unusual chemical composition.

“NASA’s Cassini spacecraft recently revealed Enceladus as a dynamic place, recording geological features such as geysers emerging from the ‘tiger stripes’ which are thought to be cracks caused by tectonic activity on the south pole of the moon’s surface,” said Dr Dave Stegman, a Centenary Research Fellow in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne.

Enceladus is also one of the brightest objects in our solar system because the ice covering its surface reflects almost 100 percent of the sunlight that strikes it.

It reflects so much of the sun’s energy that its surface temperature is about -201 degrees Celsius.

Grappling with how an inaccessible small moon with a completely frozen interior was capable of displaying geological activity, Dr Stegman and colleagues used computer simulations to virtually explore it.

Ammonia, usually found on Earth as an odorous gas used to make fertilizers, has been indirectly observed to be present in Enceladus and formed the basis of the study, which is the first to reveal the origins of the subsurface ocean.

The model reveals that Enceladus initially had a frozen shell composed of a mixture of ammonia and water ice surrounding a rocky core.

Over time, as Enceladus interacted with other moons, a small amount of heat was generated above the silicate core which made the ice shell separate into chemically distinct layers.

An ammonia-enriched liquid layer formed on top of the core while a thin layer of pure water ice formed above that.

“We found that if a layer of pure water ice formed near the core, it would have enough buoyancy to rise upwards, and such a redistribution of mass can generate large tectonic stresses at the surface,” said Dr Stegman.

“However, the pure water ice rising up is also slightly warmer which causes the separation to occur again, this time forming an ammonia-enriched ocean just under the surface. The presence of ammonia, which acts as an anti-freeze, then helps keep the ocean in its liquid state,” he explained.

“These simulations are an important step in understanding how planets evolve and provide questions to focus future space exploration and observations. It will hopefully progress our understanding of how and why planets and moons are different to each other,” he added. (ANI)

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Mars had a wetter and warmer climate in the recent past

July 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, July 3 (ANI): Findings by NASA’s Phoenix Mars mission indicates that the Red Planet had a wetter and warmer climate in the recent past, and could again in the future.

Phoenix ended communications in November 2008 as the approach of Martian winter depleted energy from the lander’s solar panels.

“Not only did we find water ice, as expected, but the soil chemistry and minerals we observed lead us to believe this site had a wetter and warmer climate in the recent past – the last few million years – and could again in the future,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

A paper about Phoenix water studies, for which Smith is the lead author with 36 coauthors from six nations, cites clues supporting an interpretation that the soil has had films of liquid water in the recent past.

The evidence for water and potential nutrients “implies that this region could have previously met the criteria for habitability” during portions of continuing climate cycles, according to the researchers.

The mission’s biggest surprise was finding a multi-talented chemical named perchlorate in the Martian soil.

“This Phoenix finding caps a growing emphasis on the planet’s chemistry,” said Michael Hecht of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, who has 10 coauthors on a paper about Phoenix’s soluble-chemistry findings.

“The study of Mars is in transition from a follow-the-water stage to a follow-the-chemistry stage,” Hecht said. “With perchlorate, for example, we see links to atmospheric humidity, soil moisture, a possible energy source for microbes, even a possible resource for humans,” he added. (ANI)

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“Diamond dust” snow falls every night on Mars in winter

July 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, July 3 (ANI): New data from NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander has revealed that every night during the Martian winter, water-ice crystals fall from high, thin clouds over the north pole, just like “diamond dust” that falls through the air in the Arctic.

According to a report in National Geographic News, the clouds resemble cirrus clouds on earth and the precipitation is similar to ice crystals that fall through the air in the Arctic in the middle of winter, called diamond dust.

“All told, though, there’s very little water locked up in the drifting ice crystals,” said co-author Peter Smith, principal investigator for the Phoenix mission and a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

“If you melted it all in a pan, you would be barely wetting the surface,” Smith said. “Mars is awfully dry. That’s why it’s surprising that you see snowfall,” he added.

The Phoenix lander arrived near Mars’s north pole in May 2008 and collected data for five months before shutting down due to the extreme conditions of Martian winter.

Phoenix first spotted nightly clouds in early September, as winter began to set in, via an onboard weather instrument called LIDAR.

The probe sends laser beams through the atmosphere and records the reflected light from dust and clouds.

“We made more and more late-night observations of these clouds, and noticed streaks coming out the bottom of them,” Smith said.

“As the season progressed, these streaks came closer to the surface until they were finally reaching the surface. Basically, we’re seeing snowfall,” he added.

Once the precipitation started, the snow fell every night from clouds about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) above the spacecraft’s landing site, according to Smith.

The researchers found that in the morning, the ice crystals sublimated, or turned directly from solid to gas.

The water vapor then got mixed back upward by atmospheric turbulence and again became clouds.

Smith suspects the newly discovered weather pattern is confined to the poles, although there’s a chance that precipitation could occur at high altitudes, such as the tops of volcanoes. (ANI)

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Mars quite similar to planet Earth

July 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, July 3 (ANI): A new research has determined that many characteristics of Mars are quite similar to planet Earth, including its landscape, history of water, soil and even its weather.

The research, by Mark Lemmon, a professor of atmospheric sciences, Texas A and M University, US, points out that last year’s Phoenix Mars Lander mission keeps revealing secrets about the planet, answering some questions but raising other big ones.

“Phoenix landed in a place that has access to Martian ice, which is exciting by itself,” Lemmon said of the Mars probe, which landed May 25, 2008.

The mission goals were to investigate the suitability of Mars for past or present life, but Phoenix was incapable of detecting life itself.

“Phoenix was designed to verify and investigate subsurface ice, and it found it almost instantly,” explained Lemmon. “The entire area where it landed has water ice just a few inches under the soil. The area is cold now, but it has been warmer in the past,” he added.

“No water in a liquid state has been found yet, but there is new evidence that Mars had liquid water billions of years ago,” said Lemmon.

Using its robotic arm, the Mars Lander was able to scoop up dirt, which was mixed with ice, and analyze it.

“Where it landed is a barren place that resembles the dry valleys of Antarctica. The area has mounds and troughs, and just like in Antarctic valleys, there is no liquid water but plenty of ice,” said Lemmon.

“Some of these patches are fairly pure. Others have the ice mixed with soil containing energy sources and nutrients that could be used if there were life,” he added.

According to Lemmon, the soil has perchlorate, a form of chlorine that is considered hazardous, but certain types of bacteria are able to live on it here.

“The interesting thing is, the soil has a potential energy source and oxygen source for life on Mars,” he said.

Traces of calcite were also found, which shows a presence of liquid water at some time in the past, Lemmon notes.

Phoenix also found weather patterns similar to those on Earth, including cold fronts that bring in gusty winds and sub-freezing temperatures.

Another bonus: Phoenix saw small Martian snowflakes, which leads the team to believe that snowfall on Mars was once a common occurrence.

“To sum it up, we found a place on Mars that is similar to cold, dry environments on Earth, and those environments are capable of supporting life,” Lemmon explained. (ANI)

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NASA spacecraft sends first lunar images to Earth

July 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, July 3 (ANI): NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has transmitted its first images from the Moon, since reaching lunar orbit on June 23.

The spacecraft has two cameras – a low resolution Wide Angle Camera and a high resolution Narrow Angle Camera.

Collectively known as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, they were activated on June 30.

The cameras are working well and have returned images of a region a few kilometers east of Hell E crater in the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium.

As the moon rotates beneath LRO, LROC gradually will build up photographic maps of the lunar surface.

“Our first images were taken along the moon’s terminator – the dividing line between day and night – making us initially unsure of how they would turn out,” said LROC Principal Investigator Mark Robinson of Arizona State University in Tempe.

“Because of the deep shadowing, subtle topography is exaggerated, suggesting a craggy and inhospitable surface. In reality, the area is similar to the region where the Apollo 16 astronauts safely explored in 1972. While these are magnificent in their own right, the main message is that LROC is nearly ready to begin its mission,” he added.

LRO will help NASA identify safe landing sites for future explorers, locate potential resources, describe the moon’s radiation environment and demonstrate new technologies.

The satellite also has started to activate its six other instruments. The Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector will look for regions with enriched hydrogen that potentially could have water ice deposits.

The Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation is designed to measure the moon’s radiation environment. Both were activated on June 19 and are functioning normally.

Instruments expected to be activated during the next week and calibrated are the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, designed to build 3-D topographic maps of the moon’s landscape; the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment, which will make temperature maps of the lunar surface; and the Miniature Radio Frequency, or Mini-RF, an experimental radar and radio transmitter that will search for subsurface ice and create detailed images of permanently-shaded craters.

The final instrument, the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project, will be activated after the other instruments have completed their calibrations, allowing more time for residual contaminants from the manufacture and launch of LRO to escape into the vacuum of space.

This instrument is an ultraviolet-light imager that will use starlight to search for surface ice. It will take pictures of the permanently-shaded areas in deep craters at the lunar poles. (ANI)

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NASA’s Moon mission successfully completes lunar maneuver

June 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, June 24 (ANI): NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, successfully completed its most significant early mission milestone on June 23 with a lunar swingby and calibration of its science instruments.

The satellite will search for water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the moon’s south pole.

With the assist of the moon’s gravity, LCROSS and its attached Centaur booster rocket successfully entered into polar Earth orbit at 6:20 a.m. PDT on June 23.

The maneuver puts the spacecraft and Centaur on course for a pair of impacts near the moon’s south pole on October 9.

“The successful completion of the LCROSS swingby proves the science instruments are functioning as expected. It is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the entire team,” said Dan Andrews, LCROSS project manager at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California.

“We are elated at the results from the maneuver and eagerly anticipate the impacts in early October,” he added.

During its swing by the moon, the spacecraft’s instruments were turned on and calibrated by scanning three sites on the lunar surface.

These sites were the craters Mendeleev, Goddard C and Giordano Bruno. They were selected because they offer a variety of terrain types, compositions and illumination conditions.

The spacecraft also scanned the lunar horizon to confirm its instruments are aligned in preparation for observing the Centaur’s debris plume.

“Each instrument returned good data that the science team will spend the next few weeks analyzing,” said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist at Ames.

“These data will ensure we are as prepared as possible for monitoring and interpreting data we receive during impact,” he added.

LCROSS and its attached Centaur upper stage rocket are now in a long, looping polar orbit around Earth and the moon.

Each orbit will be roughly perpendicular to the moon’s orbit around Earth and take about 37 days to complete.

Before impact, the spacecraft and Centaur will make approximately three orbits.

LCROSS and the Centaur separately will collide with the moon at approximately 7:30 a.m. EDT on October 9, creating a pair of debris plumes that will be analyzed for the presence of water ice or water vapor, hydrocarbons and hydrated materials.

The spacecraft and Centaur are targeted to impact the moon’s south pole near the Cabeus region.

The exact target crater will be identified 30 days before impact, after considering information collected by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and observatories on Earth. (ANI)

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Subsurface ice on Mars exposed by recent impact craters

March 31, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, March 31 (ANI): The HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has observed some small, freshly gouged craters in images taken in 2008, which in turn have exposed hidden subsurface ice on the Red Planet.

According to a report in New Scientist, seen at five sites over a latitude range of 43 degrees to 56 degrees north, the excavations are typically 3 to 6 meters across and a third to two-thirds of a meter deep.

One cluster must have appeared sometime between June and August, and a somewhat larger pit showed up between January and September.

What did astound the team were splashes of white seen in and around a handful of these craterlets.

Apparently, fist-sized impactors had punched into a layer of ice hidden by a topping of dust about a third of a metre deep.

In the months that followed, these snowy splashes gradually faded from view.

Water ice isn’t stable at the craters’ latitudes, so most likely, it gradually sublimated, or vaporised, into the atmosphere, leaving behind a veneer of any dust that had been mixed with it.

The disappearing act might also be due in part to a coating of dust blown in from the atmosphere.

Either way, notes HiRISE investigator Shane Byrne of the University of Arizona, the icy deposits had to be at least a couple of inches (several centimeters) thick, and they couldn’t have been unearthed from more than a foot or two (0.3-0.6 m) down.

According to Byrne, prior surveys, particularly one done by the neutron spectrometer aboard NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, show that vast reservoirs of ice lay barely buried across most of the planet’s polar and mid-latitude regions.

But, scientists are only now realising just how near the surface the ice lies – and how easily it can be reached.

“It’s probably just tens of centimeters down,” said HiRISE team leader Alfred McEwen. (ANI)

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Slushy water on Titan may be proof of volcanism

March 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, March 30 (ANI): New radar images from NASA’s Cassini probe have suggested that slushy water from a hidden ocean may be pooling onto the icy surface of Saturn’s moon Titan, thus bolstering the case for the existence of volcanoes on its surface.

Titan’s exterior, where the temperature is around -180 degree Celsius, is thought to be mostly water-ice, but it may be a different story deep down.

Variations in the moon’s rate of rotation suggest an ocean could lurk below.

An area of Titan called Hotei Arcus appears to fluctuate in brightness on timescales of several months, and in 2005, Robert Nelson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and colleagues, suggested this might be the result of “cryovolcanic” eruptions of water from below.

Others argued that the flickers were caused by the moon’s hazy atmosphere.

The cryovolcanism idea was bolstered in 2008, when observations of Hotei Arcus by a radar instrument aboard NASA’s Cassini probe revealed structures that resembled lava flows.

Some opponents of the idea still argued these might be deposits of sediment, carried by a flow of methane in the past.

Now, according to a report in New Scientist, radar images from Cassini have allowed scientists led by Randolph Kirk of the US Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona, to create a 3D view of the area.

It turns out that the sinuous structures tower 200 meters above their surroundings.

They say that this is consistent with the structures having formed when slushy water and ammonia squirted onto the surface and froze, but that they could not have been produced by a flood of liquid methane depositing sediment.

The structures may have formed when slushy water and ammonia squirted onto the surface and froze.

If slush volcanoes have been erupting recently, Titan would join a select group of solar system objects – Earth and Io – known to be volcanic at present.

As for life existing in the ocean below, Kirk said, “It’s conceivable life could be going on down there.” (ANI)

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Salty pools may exist on Mars

March 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, March 25 (ANI): NASA’s Phoenix Lander has shown the presence of perchlorate salts in Martian soil, which can keep water liquid at temperatures of minus 70 degrees Celsius, leading scientists to suggest that briny pools may exist just below the surface of Mars.

According to a report by BBC News, pockets of brine might form when soil interacted with ice.

“I do think those pools might exist. But there’s still more to know about the properties of these perchlorate solutions, such as what their vapour pressure is,” Dr Mike Hecht, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, explained.

Phoenix used thrusters to slow its descent to the surface, which blew away topsoil, exposing water-ice just centimeters beneath.

“Here are all these perchlorate salts right under them, by a few centimeters, is a slab of (water ice). It doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to say that those two materials will interact,” said Dr Hecht.

“And once you get dampness, the perchlorate is very soluble and it will become mobile,” he added.

On Earth, perchlorates – salts derived from perchloric acid – are used in solid rocket fuel, fireworks and airbags.

Scientists are just starting to understand the important roles they may play on Mars.

According to Dr Hecht, forming pockets of liquid on Mars would require just the right concentrations of perchlorate salts.

“In this case, we have very little perchlorate and vast slabs of ice, so I can imagine we have an excess of water. This means you would form a pool of low temperature brine if the two ever interacted,” he said.

Dr Hecht said that the discovery of these compounds made the Red Planet seem more Earth-like in several respects. (ANI)

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Water near Mars’ surface may be painting dark streaks on it every spring

February 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, February 15 (ANI): Scientists believe that the dark streaks that appear on Mars’ polar dunes every spring may be caused by liquid water near the surface, a fillip for the hunt for life.

The dark streaks of sand a few metres wide slide downslope at about a metre a day.

“They show a branching pattern, so it seems like some liquid material is flowing,” New Scientist magazine quoted Akos Kereszturi, of the Collegium Budapest in Hungary, as saying.

Kereszturi is of the opinion that they appear when molecules in surface water ice are attracted to molecules in the minerals below.

Using computer models, his team has come to the conclusion that this melts an ultrathin layer, which lubricates grains within the dune so they flow downwards.

“That liquid water could exist near Mars’s surface at this moment is really interesting, especially for its impact on the search for life,” says Matt Balme of the UK’s Open University in Milton Keynes. (ANI)

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‘Dark’ comets may pose deadly threat to Earth

February 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, Feb 12 (ANI): Astronomers have claimed that swathes of dark comets may e prowling the solar system, posing a deadly threat to Earth.

According to a report in New Scientist, UK-based astronomers Bill Napier at Cardiff University and David Asher at Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland have made the claim that many such comets could be going undetected.

“There is a case to be made that dark, dormant comets are a significant but largely unseen hazard,” said Napier.

In previous work, Napier and Janaki Wickramasinghe, also at Cardiff, have suggested that when the solar system periodically passes through the galactic plane, it nudges comets in our direction.

These periodic comet showers appear to correlate with the dates of ancient impact craters found on Earth, which would suggest that most impactors in the past were comets, not asteroids.

Now, Napier and Asher warn that some of these comets may still be zipping around the solar system. Other observations support their case.

The rate that bright comets enter the solar system implies there should be around 3000 of them buzzing around, and yet only 25 are known.

According to the astronomers, we may not see them, simply because they are too dark.

Such dark comets are not unheard of. They occur when an “active” comet’s reflective water ice has evaporated away, leaving behind an organic crust that only reflects a small fraction of light.

Clark Chapman at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said that such dark comets “would absorb sunlight very well” and so could be detected by the heat they would emit. (ANI)

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