NASA To Reveal New Scientific Findings About The Moon

[Sir Stewart]

LINK

Sept. 22, 2009

 

Dwayne Brown

Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1726

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

 

 

 

MEDIA ADVISORY: M09-183

 

NASA TO REVEAL NEW SCIENTIFIC FINDINGS ABOUT THE MOON

 

 

 

WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a media briefing at 2 p.m. EDT on

Thursday, Sept. 24, to discuss new science data from the moon

collected during national and international space missions. NASA

Television and the agency's Web site will provide live coverage of

the briefing from the James E. Webb Memorial Auditorium at NASA

Headquarters, 300 E St. SW, in Washington.

 

The briefing participants are:

- Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, Science Mission

Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington

- Carle Pieters, principal investigator, Moon Mineralogy Mapper, Brown

University

- Rob Green, project instrument scientist, Moon Mineralogy Mapper,

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

- Roger Clark, team member, Cassini spacecraft Visual and Infrared

Mapping Spectrometer and co-investigator, Moon Mineralogy Mapper,

U.S. Geological Survey in Denver

- Jessica Sunshine, deputy principal investigator for NASA’s Deep

Impact extended mission and co-investigator for Moon Mineralogy

Mapper, Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland

 

Reporters unable to attend the briefing may ask questions by

telephone. To reserve a telephone line, journalists should e-mail

their name, media affiliation and telephone number to Steve Cole at:

 

 

stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

 

 

 

 

 

Papers supporting the briefing will be published online by the journal

Science at its Science Express Web site. Science will lift its

embargo at 2 p.m. EDT, Sept. 24.

 

For more information about NASA TV downlinks and streaming video,

visit:

 

 

 

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

 

 

-end

[cryptique]

So it really is made out of cheese?

[Moss]

I'm not falling for it, they are just going to gather, turn around, and drop trou on us.

[Sir Stewart]

Rumor has it they found ice.

[Good Old Neon]

Personally, I always thought it was a prop put there by god to trick us into disbelief just so he could derive joy from watching our asses fry.

[isadorah]

I worked with a guy at NASA named Phil Sunshine; I wonder if Jessica Sunshine is his wife. I like that NASA has employees with the last name sunshine.

[anthony]

I heard they were gonna fess up and say we never went there.

 

[bjorn_skurj]

"Good day, gentlemen. This is a prerecorded briefing made prior to your departure and which for security reasons of the highest importance has been known on board during the mission only by your H-A-L 9000 computer. Now that you are in Jupiter's space and the entire crew is revived it can be told to you. Eighteen months ago the first evidence of intelligent life off the Earth was discovered. It was buried 40 feet below the lunar surface near the crater Tycho. Except for a single very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter, the four-million-year-old black monolith has remained completely inert. Its origin and purpose are still a total mystery."

[moxiebean]

In related news, the surviving members of Pink Floyd have announced plans to reunite and record new album. Working title: Wet Side of The Moon

[RainDogToo]

Surprise! Water Found On Moon's Surface

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113159860&sc=fb&cc=fp

[TCP]

If this isn't about alien's I'm gonna be sad

[Elixir Sue]

Surprise! Water Found On Moon's Surface

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113159860&sc=fb&cc=fp

When the Apollo astronauts brought back samples from the moon, those specimens did contain trace amounts of water, but it was assumed to be water from Earth that had gotten mixed in by accident.

[Moss]

They already did (sort of):

 

Capricorn One

 

Go OJ, Go!

[W(TF)]

So what does it mean, they think we have another big resource to plunder? Looking for more funding from POTUS?

 

Isn't this more important news? I'm no scientist, I just don't know why these discoveries are that relevant. We already fucked up the planet here, leave well enough alone.

[The High Heat]

It was reported that an astronaut claimed the moon looked very much like a kid's face behind a giant bubble of gum.

[Calexico]

It was reported that an astronaut claimed the moon looked very much like a kid's face behind a giant bubble of gum.

 

 

With a guy who looked like Jeff Tweedy carrying a camera lurking not far away.

[Guest Speed Racer]

Isn't this more important news?

 

Not to hijack the thread, but on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most viable, that is about a 2 in terms of succeeding as a vaccine. Not marketable at all yet. A good step for mankind, to be sure, but uh, we still need that "giant leap." (Oooh, way to bring it back on topic!)

[anthony]

Not to hijack the thread, but on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most viable, that is about a 2 in terms of succeeding as a vaccine. Not marketable at all yet. A good step for mankind, to be sure, but uh, we still need that "giant leap." (Oooh, way to bring it back on topic!)

True, but wouldn't you rather see money spent on that kind of research compared to moon water research? I would. Sure, space exploration is cool but I'd rather see us focus our (increasingly diminishing) resources on saving people right here on Terra Firma - however small the step is.

[Guest Speed Racer]

True, but wouldn't you rather see money spent on that kind of research compared to moon water research? I would. Sure, space exploration is cool but I'd rather see us focus our (increasingly diminishing) resources on saving people right here on Terra Firma - however small the step is.

 

Oh, it's not about that at all. Money has been poured into HIV/AIDS research for decades, and is in NO danger of ever being underfunded in the near or (for now at least) distant future. That's not an issue at all. This press-release from NASA goes to show that it remains to be a massively underfunded program gasping for legitimacy in a world that doesn't seem to care about space anymore.

[isadorah]

Less than 1% of the federal budget goes to NASA.

 

--

 

oh, and NASA does a lot of research in the biological sciences. Maybe moon water holds the key to cure something.

[bjorn_skurj]

Look. All of human civilization has done what it has done in a period between ice ages. Another ice age is coming, global warming notwithstanding. At some point, we may, no, WILL need to leave this planet if the species is to survive. All of this "Life After People" crap is defeatism.

[Guest Jules]

space exploration is cool but I'd rather see us focus our (increasingly diminishing) resources on s

Since when are our "resources" diminishing?

[isadorah]

I sometimes have thought NASA lacks imagination since they are always looking for water outside of our planet as a way to find life outside of our planet. What if there is life right next door on Venus, but instead of being sustained on water and oxygen, it is sustained by carbon dioxide and nitrogen and would die if exposed to water.

[Guest Speed Racer]

I sometimes have thought NASA lacks imagination since they are always looking for water outside of our planet as a way to find life outside of our planet. What if there is life right next door on Venus, but instead of being sustained on water and oxygen, it is sustained by carbon dioxide and nitrogen and would die if exposed to water.

 

I don't think NASA and the other space powers are quite dumb enough to overlook other possibilities. They've certainly explored it enough to have figured out a thing or two about whether there is life on the planet.

 

Oh, and for today's Definition of Hell, also from the Wikipedia page on Venus:

 

A manned Venus flyby mission, using Apollo program hardware, was proposed in the late 1960s. The mission was planned to launch in late October or early November 1973, and would have used a Saturn V to send three men to fly past Venus in a flight lasting approximately one year. The spacecraft would have passed approximately 5,000 kilometres from the surface of Venus about four months later.

[isadorah]

I don't think NASA and the other space powers are quite dumb enough to overlook other possibilities. They've certainly explored it enough to have figured out a thing or two about whether there is life on the planet.

 

 

 

I worked there. The culture is to look for water; yes they look for other possibilities and explore everything a lot, but my experience on the job was that there was indeed limited imagination at times which is where I formed my opinion from. I was using Venus as a hypothetical not a definitive there is life there.

 

NASA has an interesting culture to say the least. It also gets jerked around and completely reconfigured every 4-8 years. It is a small resounding miracle any science ever gets accomplished with the constant changing. That might be why there is such a steady ingrained culture there.

 

They put out a publication every year, I can't remember the name, that shows all of the science that has been developed and how it has translated over into every day use.