ONE STEP CLOSER. We might just get that Moon base Elon Musk is hoping for.

On Monday, researchers from NASA, the University of Hawaii, and Brown University confirmed the existence of water ice on the surface of the Moon at its poles. That could provide future lunar colonists with the easily-accessible water supply they’d need to survive off-world.

The researchers published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

A DECADE IN THE MAKING. For their study, the researchers relied on data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), an instrument that journeyed to the Moon in 2008 aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 craft. The instrument mapped the entire Moon’s surface to reveal its mineral composition. In 2009, that data helped scientists discover that the Moon had water molecules in its polar regions. They just didn’t know whether it was at the surface.

From this same data, the team behind this new study confirmed that both of the Moon’s poles have patchy deposits of ice on their surfaces. The deposits at the southern pole are mostly contained within lunar craters; those at the northern pole are more spread out.

ONWARD AND UPWARD. While we’ve known for nearly a decade that there’s water on the Moon in some form, this new study is the first to confirm that some of that water is in the form of ice, and that it’s on the Moon’s surface.

This surface ice would be easier to access than ice below the surface, which could make it invaluable to our plans to return crewed mission to the Moon and perhaps even set up a lunar colony.

For now, NASA and its partners plan figure out everything they can about this ice, including how it formed and its role within the lunar environment. And who knows — it could play a major role as we decide to send humans back to the Moon.

READ MORE: Ice Confirmed at the Moon’s Poles [NASA]

reeferences: NASA

BIG DAY. We can now put a price tag on a view of the edge of the universe: $1 billion.

That’s what it’s going to cost to build the Giant Magellan Telescope, and we’re officially on our way to bringing the massive device to fruition.

BIG TELESCOPE. On Tuesday, GMTO Corporation (GMTO), the company spearheading the project, announced it had begun construction on the telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.

Once completed, the massive device will consist of seven round mirrors arranged like a honeycomb that measure a total of 24 meters (80 feet) in diameter. An advanced computer program will help it correct the distortion caused by Earth’s atmosphere. This combination of sophisticated hardware and software will make the Giant Magellan Telescope will be 10 times as precise as the Hubble telescope.

BIG QUESTIONS. The Giant Magellan Telescope should be online and ready for use in 2024, but researchers already have big plans for the device.

It will be able to collect more light than any telescope every built, including light from the earliest days of the universe (because of how long it takes light to travel such immense distances, looking at that light invariably means looking back in time). The device will allow us to determine the distance of far-off objects from the Earth and their composition.

According to the Giant Magellan Telescope website, this improved view of our universe could help answer many of the greatest questions of modern astronomy, including how galaxies form, the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and how stars formed after the Big Bang.

It might even be able to help answer the question pondered by nearly everyone who’s ever looked at the night sky: Are we alone in the universe?

Editor’s note 6/21/18 at 1:00 PM ET: This article has been updated to clarify that, because of the distances involved and how long it takes light to travel, the telescope will also allow us to look back through time. 

READ MORE: The Latest in a New Generation of Giant Telescopes Broke Ground This Week [Quartz]

More on forthcoming telescopes: The Latest Super Telescopes Will Let You See Space Like Never Before

Click here for the complete article and credits:

This dramatic image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the planetary nebula NGC 3918, a brilliant cloud of colorful gas in the constellation of Centaurus, around 4,900 light-years from Earth.

In the center of the cloud of gas, and completely dwarfed by the nebula, are the dying remnants of a red giant. During the final convulsive phase in the evolution of these stars, huge clouds of gas are ejected from the surface of the star before it emerges from its cocoon as a white dwarf. The intense ultraviolet radiation from the tiny remnant star then causes the surrounding gas to glow like a fluorescent sign. These extraordinary and colorful planetary nebulas are among the most dramatic sights in the night sky, and often have strange and irregular shapes, which are not yet fully explained.

NGC 3918’s distinctive eye-like shape, with a bright inner shell of gas and a more diffuse outer shell that extends far from the nebula, looks as if it could be the result of two separate ejections of gas. But this is in fact not the case: studies of the object suggest that they were formed at the same time, but are being blown from the star at different speeds. The powerful jets of gas emerging from the ends of the large structure are estimated to be shooting away from the star at speeds of up to 217,500 miles (350,000 kilometers) per hour.

By the standards of astronomical phenomena, planetary nebulas like NGC 3918 are very short-lived, with a lifespan of just a few tens of thousands of years.

The image is a composite of visible and near-infrared snapshots taken with Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.

Credit:  ESA/Hubble and NASA
Text: European Space Agency (ESA)

by Kristin Houser  August 21, 2018  Off World  https://futurism.com/?p=136089&post

ONE STEP CLOSER. We might just get that Moon base Elon Musk is hoping for.

On Monday, researchers from NASA, the University of Hawaii, and Brown University confirmed the existence of water ice on the surface of the Moon at its poles. That could provide future lunar colonists with the easily-accessible water supply they’d need to survive off-world.

The researchers published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

A DECADE IN THE MAKING. For their study, the researchers relied on data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), an instrument that journeyed to the Moon in 2008 aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 craft. The instrument mapped the entire Moon’s surface to reveal its mineral composition. In 2009, that data helped scientists discover that the Moon had water molecules in its polar regions. They just didn’t know whether it was at the surface.

From this same data, the team behind this new study confirmed that both of the Moon’s poles have patchy deposits of ice on their surfaces. The deposits at the southern pole are mostly contained within lunar craters; those at the northern pole are more spread out.

ONWARD AND UPWARD. While we’ve known for nearly a decade that there’s water on the Moon in some form, this new study is the first to confirm that some of that water is in the form of ice, and that it’s on the Moon’s surface.

This surface ice would be easier to access than ice below the surface, which could make it invaluable to our plans to return crewed mission to the Moon and perhaps even set up a lunar colony.

For now, NASA and its partners plan figure out everything they can about this ice, including how it formed and its role within the lunar environment. And who knows — it could play a major role as we decide to send humans back to the Moon.

READ MORE: Ice Confirmed at the Moon’s Poles [NASA]

References: NASA