A Year of Discovery and Promise in Space
And I'm Steve Ember with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. This week, we tell about some of the biggest space stories of two thousand nine. First, there was the American space agency's discovery of water on the moon. We also talk to a NASA expert ICE MACHINEabout the discovery of methane gas on Mars. And we hear about the test flight of NASA's newest rocket.
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An artist's picture of LCROSS Possibly the biggest space story this year was the discovery of waterlady's garment on the moon. The best evidence was provided by a dramatic experiment carried out on October ninth. NASA used its Lunar Crater Observing and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, to look for water deep beneath the lunar surface. To get below the ancient lunar rocks, NASA crashed a rocket into the MBT SHOESmoon's south pole. The crash caused soil to be expelled many kilometers above the lunar surface. LCROSS studied the soil before it too crashed into the moon. The experiment pushed the search for water several meters below the lunar surface??much deeper than had been possible before.
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LCROSS scientists Anthony Colaprete and Kim Ennico study early results from the lunar impact experiment In November, Anthony Colaprete, a leading scientist with the LCROSS proximity switchproject, spoke about information gathered by the spacecraft. He said about one hundred kilograms of water had been found in the material ejected by the moon crash. Water has now been confirmed in amounts much greater than had been thought. In September, NASA scientists had announced the discovery of water molecules mainly in the moon's extreme northern and southern areas. They noted, however, that they could also be seeing evidence of another molecule, hydroxyl.
VOICE ONE: Instruments on three separate spacecraft gathered that evidence of wholesale nfl jerseyslunar water. NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper made the most recent observations. It was one of eleven scientific devices carried by the Chandrayaan-One spacecraft of the Indian Space Research Organization. The Mapper is a spectrometer, which measures reflected light wavelengths. The device shows scientists what an object is made of from great distances. Similar devices on NASA's Cassini and Epoxi spacecraft also reported water. But those observations were made years ago. NASA scientists had not trusted the results without clear confirmation. The Moon Mineralogy Mapper could only examine lunar soil Fabric structuresto a depth of a few millimeters. And the amount of water found in that layer was very small. Now, LCROSS has shown that large amounts of water could exist on the moon. And it raises even more questions. Was water brought to the moon by space rocks and icy bodies called comets? Or could processes deep within the moon produce water? If that is the case, it may be possible that the moon could hold enough water for future explorations or even colonies.
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An image showing methane on Mars The presence of water on the moon was not the only major solar system wedding dressdiscovery NASA made this year. In January, a team of NASA and university scientists announced that they had found methane gas on Mars. The group used NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility and the W.M. Keck telescope. Both instruments are in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Methane is better known as natural gas. On Earth, it is mainly produced by processes linked to biology. This raises the exciting possibility that life may havewedding gowns existed in the past on Mars. Or it may still exist deep below the surface. Michael Meyer is lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program in Washington. He spoke to us about the finding. MICHAEL MEYER: "It really means that the planet is more active than we thought, and more active--and that can be geologically or maybe even biologically." VOICE ONE: On Earth, biological activity is very effective in making methane.cheap wedding dresses But Michael Meyer notes that methane also can come from a purely non-biological process called serpentinization. He says the methane discovery presents scientists with a mystery because it is still not clear how the gas is being produced. Martian methane is also unusual because it is not evenly spread over the planet. It can become concentrated in small areas and then disappear. This suggests processes that both supply and remove methane from the atmosphere in certain places. Currently, the best explanation for the loss of methane is that it chemically reacts with dust in the atmosphere. The gas may then turn into something else such as carbon dioxide.