Water mining on the moon may be easier than expected, India's Chandrayaan-3 lander finds
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Future astronauts traveling to the moon may have easier access to life-sustaining water and extractable ice than previously thought, according to new research.
A team of scientists led by Durga Prasad of the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad analyzed lunar temperature data collected on site by India's Chandrayaan-3 mission, which landed near the moon's south pole in August 2023. The researchers found that temperatures at the spacecraft's landing site fluctuated dramatically, even among areas that are very close to each other.
To better understand these temperature swings, the researchers plugged this data into a computer model they fine-tuned to match the spacecraft's landing conditions, including local topography and illumination. The results suggest higher latitudes on the moon with slopes that face its poles share conditions similar to those at Chandrayaan-3's landing site. These regions typically receive less intense solar energy, which leads to cooler surface temperatures that could allow for the accumulation of ice at relatively shallow depths. This means such lunar areas would present fewer technical challenges for accessing local resources compared to the more extreme conditions at the moon's crater-riddled poles, the researchers say.
The findings hold significance for agencies planning long-term crewed missions to the moon's south pole, such as NASA with its Artemis program. If ice can be found and harnessed on the moon, it could reduce astronauts' reliance on Earth-based supplies, making missions more sustainable and cost-effective. Water extracted from ice could serve multiple purposes for astronauts, not only as drinking water but also for producing rocket fuel by splitting water molecules into their constituent parts — oxygen and hydrogen.
For decades, however, the only direct measurements of the moon's surface temperature were taken during the Apollo 15 and 17 missions in the 1970s, both of which landed near the moon's equator — far from the proposed sites for future polar missions.
In August 2023, shortly after the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft notched a flawless touchdown near the lunar south pole, an instrument onboard its lander, called ChaSTE — short for Chandra's Surface Thermophysical Experiment — bored into the moon's soil, reaching a depth of up to 10 centimeters (4 inches) and measured local temperatures over the course of a lunar day.
The recorded data showed temperatures at the spacecraft's landing site that's on a sunward-facing slope — named "Statio Shiv Shakti" — peaked at 179.6 degrees Fahrenheit (82 degrees Celsius) and plummeted to -270.67 degrees F (-168.15 degrees C) during the night. However, just a meter away, where the terrain flattened out and faced toward the pole, the temperature peaks were much lower, reaching just 138.2 degrees F (59 degrees C).
Related Stories:
— Chandrayaan-3: A complete guide to India's third mission to the moon
— The moon: Everything you need to know about Earth's companion
— India aims for 2028 launch of Venus orbiter as part of ambitious space roadmap
Simulations suggest that slopes greater than 14 degrees in higher latitudes, but facing in the poleward direction, may be cool enough for ice to accumulate at shallow depths. And these conditions are similar to those proposed for future lunar south pole landing missions, including with NASA's Artemis moon missions, the researchers write in their new study:
"Such sites are not only scientifically interesting but also pose less technical challenges for exploration in comparison with regions closer to the poles of the moon."
The study was published on Thursday (March 6) in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
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National Geographic
38 minutes ago
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Asteroids with ‘unstable orbits' hide around Venus—do they threaten Earth?
NASA's Parker Solar Probe captured this image showing the nightside surface of Venus. A family of asteroids share the planet's orbit, and two new studies suggest that one day the space rocks could theoretically pose a danger to Earth. Photograph by NASA/APL/NRL Venus has groupies—a family of asteroids that share its orbit, either trailing it or leading it as the planet revolves around the sun. Researchers have known that such stealthy space rocks might exist for years, but now, a pair of papers (one published in a journal, and one a pre-print undergoing peer-review) conclude that some might develop unstable orbits and, over a very long period of time, arch toward Earth. But despite what several histrionic headlines have claimed, Earth is not at risk of one of these asteroids suddenly sneaking up on us and vaporizing a city. 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Asteroids around Venus, shown in the background above during a 2012 transit, are difficult to track because they fall inside Earth's orbit and are obscured by the sun's glare. Research suggests that some of the asteroids that share Venus' orbit are large enough to take out a city on Earth. Illustration by David A. Hardy, Futures: 50 Years In Space/Science Photo Library The real problem, though, is that asteroids like this are remarkably difficult to find, and you can't protect yourself against a danger you cannot see. Fortunately, in the next few years, two of the most advanced observatories ever built are coming online. And together, they will find more asteroids—including those hiding near Venus—than the sum total already identified by the world's telescopes. 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Combined, these characteristics describe 'potentially hazardous asteroids'—and finding them is of paramount importance. Venus appears above giant sandstone cliffs amid the sand dunes of Tassili National Park in Algeria. Photograph by Babak Tafreshi, Nat Geo Image Collection Asteroids are first found because of the sunlight they reflect. That works well for most, but there are known to be asteroids hiding interior to Earth's orbit, toward the direction of the sun. And that's a problem. Astronomers seeking out these asteroids cannot just point their telescopes directly at the sun: It would be like trying to see a lit match in front of a nuclear explosion. Instead, they look in the vicinity of the sun in the few minutes just after sunset, or just before sunrise. Not only are these surveys severely time-limited, but by aiming close to the horizon, they are peering through more of the Earth's atmosphere, which distorts what they are looking at. 'All of these factors make it hard to search for and discover asteroids near Venus' orbit,' says Sheppard. (Here's how researchers track asteroids that might hit Earth.) The invisible Venusian fleet Asteroids have occasionally been spotted in this sun-bleached corner of space. And twenty of them have been found scooting along the same orbital highway Venus uses to orbit the sun. These are known as co-orbital asteroids; similar rocks can be found either following or trailing other planets, most notably Jupiter. Co-orbiting asteroids tend to cluster around several gravitationally stable sections, known as Lagrange points, along the planet's orbital path. But over a timescale of about 12,000 years or so, it's thought that the Venus co-orbital asteroids can dramatically alter their orbits. They remain on the same orbital path as Venus, but instead of maintaining a circular orbit, they get creative: Some migrate to a different Lagrange point, while others zip about in a horseshoe pattern around several Lagrange points. Some of these new, exotic orbits become quite stretched-out and elliptical—and, in some cases, these orbits can eventually bring these asteroids closer to Earth. When they do, 'there is a higher chance of a collision,' says Carruba. In their first study, published in the journal Icarus earlier this year, Carruba and his team looked at the 20 known co-orbital asteroids of Venus. Their simulations forecast how their orbits would evolve over time and show that three of the space rocks—each between 1,000 and 1,300 feet or so—could approach within 46,500 miles of Earth's orbit. (For reference, the moon is an average of 240,000 miles from our planet.) That proximity may make them potentially hazardous asteroids. 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Many things could perturb the orbits of asteroids over that many years, so any truly accurate predictions are impossible. But the simulations came to some broad conclusions. The first is that a Venus co-orbital asteroid is more likely to approach Earth if it switches from a circular to a considerably elongated orbit—it's zooming over a larger patch of the inner solar system, including our own planet's neighborhood. The second, more surprising thing, is that some asteroids still manage to reach near-Earth space even they start out with only a mildly stretched-out orbit. It seems that their chaotic journeys through space, filled with gravitational disturbances, can still end up throwing them our way. But to be clear, these potentially worrisome orbits develop over the course of many millennia. 'This is not something to be alarmed about, as these asteroids are still relatively dynamically stable on human timescales,' says Sheppard. (These five asteroids pose the highest risk to Earth.) A new asteroid-hunting dawn For Marco Fenucci, a near-Earth object dynamicist at the European Space Agency, the paper raises awareness about these relatively mysterious asteroids in Venus' orbit. And that is a good point to make, he adds: We don't know much about these asteroids, including their population size, their dimensions, and their orbits, because we struggle to find them with today's telescopes. Two upcoming facilities are about to make this task considerably easier. The first, the U.S.-owned Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is set to officially come online in the next few weeks. With a huge field-of-view, it can see huge swathes of the night sky at once, and its giant nest of mirrors can gather so much starlight than even the smallest, faintest objects can be seen. In just three to six months, the observatory could find as many as a million new asteroids, effectively doubling the current total. Meg Schwamb, a planetary scientist at Queen's University Belfast who was not involved with the new research, explains that Rubin will also conduct its own twilight surveys, the very sort used today to search for near-Venus asteroids. If these surveys are conducted over the next decade, 'Rubin could find as many as 40 to 50 percent of all objects larger than about [1,150 feet] in the interior-to-Venus-orbit population,' says Mario Jurić, an astronomer at the University of Washington and who was not involved with the new research. But, as with all ground-based optical telescopes, Rubin will still have the sun's glare, and Earth's atmosphere, to contend with. As long as the federal government decides to continue to fund the mission—something that is not guaranteed—NASA will also launch a dedicated asteroid-hunting space observatory, the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor, in the next few years. Unobstructed by Earth's atmosphere, it will seek out space rocks by viewing them through a highly-sensitive infrared scope, meaning it can see those hidden by the luminous sun. Even those asteroids sneaking around near Venus won't be able to hide from NEO Surveyor. And, finally, says Carruba, 'we can see if the impact threat is real, or not.'
Newsweek
2 hours ago
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NASA Tracking Three Asteroids Approaching Earth
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. NASA is monitoring three asteroids soaring past the Earth at about 8,000 to 15,000 miles per hour, the biggest of which measures around 1,300 feet in diameter. The largest space rock, known as "424482 (2008 DG5)," is due to zip past our planet at over 13,800 miles per hour later today. It is expected to come as close as 2.17 million miles from the Earth, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), A smaller asteroid known as "2025 LD," which is around 73 feet in diameter, zoomed past the Earth earlier today at over 15,000 miles per hour, according to the JPL's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). The space rock came as close as 696,000 miles from the Earth. A third asteroid, known as "2025 KY4," measuring around 42 feet in diameter, also zipped past the Earth earlier today, reaching within 1.72 million miles of our planet. The asteroid soared past at over 8,000 miles per hour. Stock image: An illustration of asteroids floating around in space. Stock image: An illustration of asteroids floating around in space. Getty Asteroids—small, rocky masses left over from the formation of the solar system nearly 4.6 billion years ago—are found in the main asteroid belt, orbiting around the sun between the paths of Mars and Jupiter. In February, data from the CNEOS showed the impact probability of an asteroid known as "2024 YR4" in 2032 was at 3.1 percent. This was "the highest impact probability NASA has ever recorded for an object of this size or larger," the national space agency noted at the time. Further studies that month brought 2024 YR4's chance of Earth impact on December 22 in 2032 down to 0.004 percent. The data showed there is "no significant potential" for 2024 YR4 to "impact our planet for the next century" and "the range of possible locations the asteroid could be on Dec. 22, 2032, has moved farther away from the Earth," NASA said in a blog post on February 24. 2024 YR4 was measured to be about 200 feet across by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, Andy Rivkin, an astronomer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, noted in a NASA blog post on April 2. There is still a "very small chance," however, for 2024 YR4 to impact the moon on that date, and that probability is currently 1.7 percent, the space agency noted. The orbits of asteroids bring them within 120 million miles of the sun. Most near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids that range in size from about 10 feet to nearly 25 miles across. "The majority of near-Earth objects have orbits that don't bring them very close to Earth, and therefore pose no risk of impact," NASA says. A small portion of NEOs—known as potentially hazardous asteroids—do merit closer attention. PHAs, which are around 460 feet in diameter, have orbits that bring them as close as 4.6 million miles of the Earth's orbit around the sun, NASA notes. Despite the number of PHAs in our solar system, none is likely to hit our planet any time soon. "The 'potentially hazardous' designation simply means over many centuries and millennia the asteroid's orbit may evolve into one that has a chance of impacting Earth. We do not assess these long-term, many-century possibilities of impact," Paul Chodas, manager of the CNEOS, previously told Newsweek. Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about asteroids? Let us know via science@
