* Astronomy

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Lunar soil

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Moon Dust

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RE: Moon soil

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Microwaving Water from Moondust

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Simulated moon dirt materials found at Stillwater Mine
The piles of waste rock from the Stillwater Mine look like ordinary rocks. But like the rare platinum group metals found in the underground mine near here, the mine's geology also contains rocks with an unusual combination of minerals and chemistry that resembles lunar dirt.

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NASA Instruments Reveal Water Molecules on Lunar Surface
NASA scientists have discovered water molecules in the polar regions of the moon. Instruments aboard three separate spacecraft revealed water molecules in amounts that are greater than predicted, but still relatively small. Hydroxyl, a molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom, also was found in the lunar soil. The findings were published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science.
NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3, instrument reported the observations. M3 was carried into space on Oct. 22, 2008, aboard the Indian Space Research Organisation's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. Data from the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, or VIMS, on NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and the High-Resolution Infrared Imaging Spectrometer on NASA's Epoxi spacecraft contributed to confirmation of the finding. The spacecraft imaging spectrometers made it possible to map lunar water more effectively than ever before.

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While the world watched in fascination as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin gambolled about on the moon, planetary scientists had their eyes on a different prize. For them, the value of the mission lay in the cargo the mission aimed to bring home, and the astronauts did not disappoint. By the time Armstrong and Aldrin climbed into the lunar module for the last time, they had collected 22 kilograms of moon rocks, enough to fill a small suitcase.
Five more Apollo crews brought the total collection of moon rock to 382 kilograms of material, made up of some 2200 individually numbered samples. Three uncrewed Russian landers recovered a further 300 grams of soil.

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A team of scientists has found the first conclusive signature for the presence of uranium on the lunar surface, an element not seen in previous Moon-mapping efforts.
The uranium signatures were detected by Robert C Reedy, a senior scientist at the Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute, who is mapping the Moons surface elements using data gathered by an advanced gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS) that rode aboard the Japanese Kaguya spacecraft.

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Moon Dust

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In the 1960s and 1970s, the Apollo Moon Program struggled with a minuscule, yet formidable enemy: sticky lunar dust. Four decades later, a new study reveals that forces compelling lunar dust to cling to surfaces - ruining scientific experiments and endangering astronauts' health - change during the lunar day with the elevation of the sun.
The study analyses the interactions on the Moon among electrostatic adhesive forces, the angle of incidence of the sun's rays, and lunar gravity. It concludes that the stickiness of lunar dust on a vertical surface changes as the sun moves higher in the sky, eventually allowing the very weak lunar gravity to pull the dust off.

American Geophysical Union (PDF)