https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/n...lts-about-moon

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From the announcement:

NASA will announce an exciting new discovery about the Moon from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) at a media teleconference at 12 p.m. EDT Monday, Oct. 26. Audio of the teleconference will stream live on the agency’s website.

This new discovery contributes to NASA’s efforts to learn about the Moon in support of deep space exploration. Under NASA’s Artemis program, the agency will send the first woman and next man to the lunar surface in 2024 to prepare for our next giant leap – human exploration of Mars as early as the 2030s. Understanding the science of the Moon also helps piece together the broader history of the inner solar system.

Briefing participants are:

Paul Hertz, Astrophysics division director at NASA Headquarters, Washington
Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters
Casey Honniball, postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Naseem Rangwala, project scientist for the SOFIA mission, NASA’s Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley, California

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Any of you smarties have guesses? SOFIA uses infrared, so I'm going to guess they've found ice deposits on the surface near the poles.

Starts in an hour. Gotta be ice.

Nasa has announced the “unambiguous” presence of water on the Moon.

I’m going to start an Imported Moon Water business. I posted years ago about my poker emporium and whorehouse establishment plans for the Moon. Moon water just adds extra panache!

news/science

From above link:


This "unambiguous detection of molecular water" will boost Nasa's hopes of establishing a lunar base.

The aim is to sustain that base by tapping into the Moon's natural resources.

The findings have been published as two papers in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Unlike previous detections of water in permanently shadowed parts of lunar craters, scientists have now detected the molecule in sunlit regions of the Moon's surface.

Speaking during a virtual teleconference, co-author Casey Honniball, postdoctoral fellow at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said: "The amount of water is roughly equivalent to a 12-ounce bottle of water in a cubic metre of lunar soil."

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Bottle Moon water is a reality!

That's a lot of water!




PairTheBoard

lyrid-meteor-shower-2021-peaking-now

From above link:

One of springtime's most prominent "shooting star" groups peaks overnight tonight (April 21-22).

The famous Lyrid meteor shower will become visible in the Northern Hemisphere beginning at about 10:30 p.m. local time and continuing overnight, weather permitting in your area of course. The best visibility will likely be before dawn, after the waxing gibbous moon sets; otherwise, you may have some interference from moonlight.

The individual meteors, or tiny space rocks, of the Lyrids appear when the Earth, moving in its orbit around the sun, plows into the dusty trail of a long-departed comet, called Thatcher, that swings by Earth every 415 years (the last time being in 1861, exactly 160 years ago).

It too late for a betting pool based on where Long March lands?

Two class-M solar flares heading our way. Some predictions have a KP level of 6, which means people around the Great Lakes area in North America may see Northern lights. Might be worth sticking your head out and looking north before going to bed tonight.

I have witnessed the ISS instead.