Nasa Moon news - as it happened: Major discovery of ‘water traps’ on lunar surface announced
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Your support makes all the difference.Nasa has announced the “unambiguous” presence of water on the Moon.
The major announcement “contributes to Nasa’s efforts to learn about the Moon in support of deep space exploration”, the US space agency said.
A live stream of the event appeared on Nasa’s website, as well as on its official YouTube channel.
You can follow all the latest updates here.
Nasa’s official Twitter account for Moon news has shared an image of Casey Honniball aboard Sofia. It appears Dr Honniball may take centre stage for this announcement – further confirmation that it is about the discovery of water?
For anyone interested, Nasa has also announced that it will be holding an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit about its findings tomorrow. Anyone can ask questions on r/space on Tuesday, 27 Oct at 10am PT / 1pm ET/ 5pm GMT.
Less than an hour to go now until Nasa’s big announcement.
Nasa TV is currently showing a video on how difficult it is to launch rockets from Earth due to its massive gravitational pull. Earlier this month, we were also reminded about another potential obstacle to lifting off from Earth: space debris.
There are currently thousands of pieces of space debris orbiting our planet, and if two large pieces collide – like they almost did recently – the consequences could be catastrophic.
A 1978 study by Nasa scientist Donald Kessler warned that the domino effect of such an event could create an impenetrable layer of debris that would make terrestrial space launches impossible – essentially trapping us on Earth.
What happens if two bits of space junk actually collide?
Domino effect could create impenetrable layer of debris that traps us on Earth
Speculation online – including in the comment section on this page – has featured jokes that Nasa is about to announce that the Moon is made of cheese.
These claims have actually been around since at least 1546, when the phrase “the moon is made of greene cheese" appeared in The Proverbs of John Heywood.
There’s no chance Nasa will reveal that the Earth’s satellite is dairy-based today though. That announcement was already made nearly 20 years ago on April Fool’s day.
Using the new camera on the recently refitted Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have been able to confirm that the Moon is made of green cheese. The telling clue was the resolution of a numeric date after which the Moon may go bad. Controversy still exists, however, over whether the date resolved is truly an expiration date or just a "sell by" date. "To be cautious, we should completely devour the Moon by tomorrow," a spokesperson advised.
Here is the image that went along with Nasa’s cheese Moon April Fool’s joke, complete with a photoshopped ‘Sell by date’.
It’s been a busy month for the Moon. October started with a full Moon, and in a very rare occurrence it will also end with one, as this Halloween we’re treated to a Blue Moon.
BREAKING: Nasa announces the “unambiguous” presence of water on the Moon.
The unambiguous detection of molecular water (H2O) on the Moon and areas on the Moon where water could be trapped stably are reported in two papers published this week in Nature Astronomy. These findings may have implications for future missions to the Moon.
More details here.
Nasa reveals major breakthrough about the Moon in highly anticipated announcement
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