* Astronomy

Water on the Moon?
A decade ago Faith Vilas, director of the Multiple Mirror Telescope in Arizona, developed a sideline obsession with the Moon. Perusing archived data from the Galileo mission to Jupiter, she saw something odd in the pictures taken of the Moon. When she filtered the pictures for certain infrared wavelengths, a telling signal popped out at a few spots near the Moon's south pole. The signal, at least in asteroids, is associated with phyllosilicates, which are minerals that need two things to form: heat and water. Was this a clue pointing to all the water ice that many think hides within the Moon's polar craters?

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From miles above, the moon's Shackleton crater appears deep, dark and smooth - an ideal place for explorers to search for water ice.
But newly released data from a NASA spacecraft orbiting the moon, after launching this summer from Cape Canaveral, shows the crater's steep sides and lumpy surface would present treacherous terrain.

"It looks very smooth in the bottom of that crater there, but actually that is deceiving. These slopes are sufficiently steep that you want to be extremely careful with them" - David Smith, principal investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's laser altimeter instrument.

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Japanese Lunar Mission Provides a Glimpse at How the Moon Took Shape
Data from the recently retired Kaguya spacecraft support the notion that the moon's crust congealed from an ocean of magma

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Uplift, Boulders of Tsiolkovskiy
Tsiolkovskiy (185 km diameter) is a spectacular example of complex impact crater. It has a terraced rim, a central peak, and a floor flooded with mare basalts. Impact events release tremendous amounts of energy and result in very dynamic changes in the local landscape. Just after the initial impact, the central peak was uplifted from lower crustal rock, forming a giant mountain in the middle of the crater. Later large and small pieces of that uplifted rock rolled down and accumulated at the base of the slope -- just waiting for future lunar explorers to examine.

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