With plans to return humans to the Moon, NASA is increasingly focused on finding oxygen there. This week, the Hubble Space Telescope may have provided some important answers…
Aristarchus Crater captured by Hubble
Due to its small mass and weak gravitational pull, the Moon is unable to maintain an atmosphere, even a very thin one. However, oxygen doesn’t necessarily have to exist in gaseous form on the surface; it can be safely contained within certain types of rocks. Collecting these rocks and processing them with chemicals or heat could release a tremendous amount of oxygen for breathing and rocket fuel.
The Moon is Earth’s only natural satellite, with an average distance of 384,403 km from Earth. Its diameter measures 3,476 km.
The Moon orbits Earth on a path that is nearly circular, taking about a month to complete one orbit.
Between 1969 and 1972, NASA’s Apollo program successfully landed 12 astronauts on the Moon, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin being the first during Apollo 11. Prior to that, the Moon was the target of many landings and flybys by spacecraft, starting with the Soviet Luna 1 mission in 1959.
The mineral on the Moon most capable of containing oxygen is ilmenite—a type of titanium oxide that the Apollo 17 crew brought back to Earth from the Taurus-Littrow region of the Moon in 1972. To assess the ilmenite reserves at that site and search for other exposed ore deposits, NASA recently decided to use the Hubble telescope to survey four regions on the Moon: Taurus-Littrow, Hadley-Apennine (the landing site of Apollo 15), the unexplored Aristarchus crater formed by a meteoric impact, and the nearby Schroter Valley.
Quickly getting to work, Hubble discovered that ilmenite deposits appear not only at the Apollo 17 landing site but also in the Schroter Valley. Notably, there is a significant abundance of this mineral in the Aristarchus crater. Aristarchus would make an excellent landing site for future geologists as meteorite impacts have blown away surface materials, allowing scientists to study the materials beneath. These features make Aristarchus a crucial location for establishing a future lunar base.
Despite providing extremely sharp images, Hubble’s giant eye cannot see objects smaller than about 6 meters in diameter on the Moon. Somewhere in the Taurus-Littrow and Hadley-Apennine regions are parts the size of an Apollo truck, left behind when the crew departed the Moon. No one has seen these metallic objects for over 30 years since humans last walked on the lunar surface. If NASA’s plans proceed, they may soon catch a glimpse of these artifacts.
Minh Sơn (According to Science, Future & Science)
