The Moon as a Resource
March 18th 2010 02:02
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No human has stepped on the moon since the Apollo missions in the 1970's. Some 30 years, NASA is going back to the moon.
Astronomers are going back, but this time through the eyes of the Hubble telescope. New images give us a new understanding of our moon that has been until now mostly overlooked.
The Hubble telescope is normally looking at objects light years away, and researchers found focusing Hubble on the moon just 250,000 miles away reveled much more information than expected.
The Hubble Space Telescope has served us well it has outlasted its used by date still taking spectacular photographs of the farthest reaches of space. recently the telescope turned its attention to our closest neighbour our moon.
These images the first taken with ultraviolet light reveal new information about the composition of the moon, with implications for future lunar exploration. Latest information obtained by Hubble show that the moon’s surface can yield oxygen. We now know that there is water on the moon and is rich in helium3.
Helium-3 (He-3) is a light, non-radioactive isotope of helium . He-3 is rare on Earth, and is sought for use in nuclear fusion research. Helium-3 is a better cleaner alternative to Uranium, since its not radio active.
Astronomers can gather a lot of useful scientific information from these images. The colours, or spectra, of light coming from a celestial object carries a chemical fingerprint of that object.
The colours showen by the spectra indicates which elements are present. the intensity of each colour tells us how much of that element is present. Spectrum analysis has been around since the first half of the 19th century.
The spectrum can also tell astronomers how fast a celestial object is moving away or towards us through an effect called the Doppler shift. Light emitted by a moving object is perceived to increase in frequency (a blue shift) if it is moving toward the observer; if the object is moving away from us, it will be shifted toward the red end of the spectrum.
Future space travel on the moon would more cost effective since there is no need to carry extra water and oxygen from earth. Colonies of humans could ” live off” the moon at least their air and water supply can be made for the minerals and water ice on the moon.
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