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Hi, I'm Leigh and this is NASA Now.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
What is it?
What's it doing?
And what can it tell us about the moon?
And a stunning discovery found on the moon
that could fuel rocket engines.
That's ahead, but first let's find
out what else is happening at NASA now.
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You might want to bring a filter if you plan
on drinking water from the moon.
Water ice recently discovered in dust at the bottom
of a crater near the moon's south pole has Mercury,
Magnesium, Calcium, even a bit of Silver in it.
The discovery of water ice was surprising for scientists
who had previously thought the lunar surface was barren
and dry.
The discovery was made by the Lunar Crater Observation
and Sensing Satellite, called LCROSS,
a companion to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Now let's take a look at the past.
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The Apollo 17 mission was the last manned mission to the moon.
It landed on the moon on December 11, 1972.
The Apollo 17 astronauts explored the moon using the
Lunar Rover.
They collected rock and soil samples
and set up experiments there.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, LRO,
is currently collecting detailed information about the moon
and its topography and here to tell us more
about it is Chief Scientist
at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Dr. James Garvin.
I'm Jim Garvin.
I'm the Chief Scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center
and I also work as the Associate Science Project Scientist
for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission,
which we call LRO.
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LRO is a very low altitude robot spacecraft bristling
with instruments that can measure the shape
of the land on the moon.
It can see what's in the ground search for things
that we might call resources that you could use
if you were on the moon.
We also have cameras that can see things the size
of a beach ball on the surface.
It's as if we are there.
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People often ask, so why would we want
to go to this other world?
No air, not a lot of water and trees everything we like.
The reason is it's a window into our own past.
The moon is like a time capsule
that preserves what was happening throughout the solar
system, particularly around the Earth, a long time ago
and those records have been totally wiped clean here
on Earth.
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We've learned, through LRO and other mechanisms,
that the moon does contain resources
that could be invaluable as we learn to live and work in space.
One could be small amounts of water frozen as ice
in the lunar soils which is as fine as talcum powder.
We can convert it to things that we need
to live and work in space.
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Water is made of Hydrogen and Oxygen a magical molecule.
We need it to live and even as ice we can use it.
We can convert it from ice into gas.
We can convert it into liquid.
We can separate the Hydrogen from the Oxygen.
Rockets run on those simple elements.
We can actually produce rocket fuel.
We can produce Oxygen that we would need to breathe.
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LRO has nine experiments that allow us
to build pieces of maps.
It's kind of like a mosaic, kind of cool, but the most critical
to form the base map which we lay everything
on is an instrument known as LOLA.
It measures the relief of the ground, what's up and down,
in 3-D in very fine scales.
If you want to go to the moon land your spacecraft there
and there's no parking lots, landing strips,
highways you've got to know where it's safe.
This is what happened on Apollo 11
when Neil Armstrong was flying the Eagle in and he looked down
and said it looks too rough for me to land.
So, he flew several hundred meters further
down range before he landed.
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Mapping is something we take for granted.
We drive our cars, GPS tells us where we are going.
Maps are important and they are mathematical entity.
Math is fun because it allows us to make maps that we can use
as people and do cool things.
So, math underlies everything we do as we start
to investigate the moon with LRO.
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So why do we want to map the moon?
To get to know it, so we can design spacecraft, for people
and machines to go there.
When we went to the moon back in the late 60's
and early 70's we went to six spots, worked hard for a couple
of days, mapped enough to know where to go and we left it.
We brought back samples and did great stuff.
There's a lot of the moon that's different left to explore.
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Did you know our first mapping of the moon began back in 1966?
NASA's Lunar Orbiter Program included five unmanned missions
that mapped 99 percent of the moon using photography.
Now you know.
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Now it's your turn to collect information about craters
on the moon so you can help find a safe landing zone
for NASA's next moon mission.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is gathering data on craters.
Scientists believe that many of the craters
on the moon were formed by the impact of meteorites.
The size and appearance of a crater depend on two things,
the size of the meteorite and its speed at impact.
Now you can try and predict the effect of an object
on the formation and appearance of a crater.
Go to the Virtual Campus at www.explorerschools.nasa.gov
for detailed instructions.
Well that's it for NASA Now, be sure to tune in next week
when we learn about the special role NASA has
in improving our air traffic control systems.
We'll see you then on NASA Now.
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NASA Now comes to you from the Virtual Campus
at NASA Explorer Schools.