Aliens On Earth.com Resources for those who are stranded here Our Bookstore is OPEN Over 5000 new & used titles, competitively priced! Topics: UFOs - Paranormal - Area 51 - Ghosts - Forteana - Conspiracy - History - Biography - Psychology - Religion - Crime - Health - Geography - Maps - Science - Money - Language - Recreation - Technology - Fiction - Other - New Search... for keyword(s)   in Page Titles in Book Title/Author in Contents of Pages ---other searches--- Metacrawler Yahoo FAST Search Google Altavista Dogpile Inference Find Northern Light IWon.com MSN Search Las Vegas Sun Location: Mothership -> UFO -> Updates -> 1999 -> Mar -> BBC: Best Site For Moonbase Revealed

UFO UpDates Mailing List

From: Steven J. Dunn <SDunn@logicon.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 09:31:01 -0800
Fwd Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 09:24:04 -0500
Subject: BBC: Best Site For Moonbase Revealed


Original Publication Date "1999/03/16 15:18:04"

By BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse

The most detailed analysis ever of the Moon's mysterious polar
regions has pinpointed the place best suited for a future human
base.

The site is on the rim of a crater called Shackleton and meets
two essential requirements. There is plenty of sunlight around
to generate solar energy and it is very close to a
permanently-shaded region, where ice is likely to be stored in
deep freeze.

Ice would not only satisfy the thirst of settlers but could be
used to generate fuel for spacecraft.

Permanently-shaded patches sit in craters at the Moon's south
pole.  Ice was discovered at the Moon's north and south poles
just over a year ago by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft. It was
hailed as a major discovery and has transformed plans to
colonise the Moon.

>From its orbit, Lunar Prospector was able to detect ice in the
polar regions but not pinpoint the exact position of the frozen
water. Its orbit has been lowered in the past few weeks to
enable it to make more precise observations.

But the new information on the location of the ice has come from
data from a previous lunar mission - the highly successful
Clementine mission that observed the Moon for 71 days in 1994.

Clementine took images of the south pole every 10 hours for
about two lunar days. Dr Ben Bussey of the European Space Agency
used the data to produce maps showing the percentage of time
that a point on the surface is illuminated during a lunar day.

The maps reveal that no part of the south pole is in constant
sunlight but there are some areas that are almost in the
permanent glare of the Sun.

The rim of the Shackleton crater is a particularly interesting
place because it is illuminated more than 80% of the time.
Nearby there are two other places, only 10 km apart, which
collectively receive illumination more than 98% of the time.

Also not far away, down in the crater itself, are regions of
permanent shadow where ice could remain unmelted by the Sun.

This is the area to put the first Moonbase.
Electricity-producing solar arrays could be placed in the bright
areas and connected by a microwave or cable link. Then the
Shackleton crater site would receive near constant solar energy,
as well as having easy access to the lunar ice resources. The
Moon's north pole is a smoother place than the south pole, but
early estimates suggest that there could be up to 13,000 square
kilometres of permanent shade there.

Clementine was put into a polar orbit from where it provided the
first digital images of the Moon's poles. The earlier Apollo
missions were in an equatorial orbit to make it easier to get
the astronauts back to Earth in an emergency.

The Moon's axis of rotation, unlike the Earth's, is not markedly
tilted compared to its orbit around the Sun. This means that the
Moon does not have strongly different seasons and that the Sun
never rises very far up in the polar skies.

If you stood at the lunar poles for a whole year the Sun would
only move up or down about 1.5 degrees.  This means that low
places close to the pole, such as the floors of craters, may
never see the Sun at all.

Scientists believe that any regions of permanent shadow are
prime candidates for the location of ice deposits. They would
act as cold traps for water molecules deposited billions of
years ago by impacting comets. A sizeable amount of ice may have
built up over the four billion year history of the Moon.

This latest analysis of the lunar poles has highlighted their
importance. Astronomers are now eagerly awaiting the new results
from the Lunar Prospector spacecraft.