PA Blog

On September 29th the images from Mercury via the Messenger mission started flowing into NASA.  A high resolution camera continues to snap shots of the little rock closest to the sun. The photographic mission Messenger will not settle into its mapping orbit until 2011.

NASA’s orbiter is sending back evidence of massive volcanism, strange impact craters and magnetic tornadoes that funnel plasma directly from the sun to the planet’s surface. Magnetic tornadoes form when the magnetic field in the solar wind links up to the field generated by a planet, a process called magnetic reconnection. All very unexpected while the surface looks similar to our moon to the naked eye.

“Up until before Messenger’s arrival, we weren’t even sure that volcanism existed on Mercury,” said Brett Denevi of Arizona State University, lead author on a paper describing the evolution of Mercury’s crust. “Now we’re seeing it’s very widespread across the surface.”

Water used to be thought to only be at the poles of the moon where the sun never shines and the sub zero temperatures never change. Recent observations by 3 different space craft now agree there is water in pockets all over the moon. Why did it take so long for this to be discovered? The answers is simple. We get tons of data from our space probes but nobody looks for things they didn’t think was there.

Almost everybody thought it impossible to find significant amounts of water on the moon outside the poles. Why? The water that would or could have existed would have thawed and evaporated into space by now. However, this water appears to be hidden by being mixed in and bonded to minerals. As long as the minerals and the ice stay in the shade it never has a chance to melt and evaporate.

The water may also migrate over the surface. Some evidence shows that ice can melt into water, flow for  a little bit then fall into a crack where it refreezes shaded from the sun. As we all know water is one of the most essential items we are going to need if we move to the moon. Not only that, it means oxygen can be created from the h20.