NASA/JPL Moon Mineralogy Mapper featured on the October 23, 2009 (Vol 326, Issue 5952) printed issue of Science Magazine. Below is an excerpt from the article featuring M3's lunar discovery:
"Since the first sample return missions of the 1960s, lunar scientists have operated under the presumption that the Moon is entirely dry. Three papers in this week's issue challenge that notion: Infrared spectroscopic measurements of the lunar surface from spacecraft provide unambiguous evidence for the presence of hydroxyl (OH) or water."
This image of the moon is from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 mission. It is a three-color composite of reflected near-infrared radiation from the sun, and illustrates the extent to which different materials are mapped across the side of the moon that faces Earth.
Small amounts of water and hydroxyl (blue) were detected on the surface of the moon at various locations. This image illustrates their distribution at high latitudes toward the poles.
Blue shows the signature of water and hydroxyl molecules as seen by a highly diagnostic absorption of infrared light with a wavelength of three micrometers. Green shows the brightness of the surface as measured by reflected infrared radiation from the sun with a wavelength of 2.4 micrometers, and red shows an iron-bearing mineral called pyroxene, detected by absorption of 2.0-micrometer infrared light.
These images from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft show data for the hemisphere of the moon that faces Earth. The image on the left shows albedo, or the sunlight reflected from the surface of the moon. The image on the right shows where infrared light is absorbed in the characteristic manner that indicates the presence of water and hydroxyl molecules. That image shows that signature most strongly at the cool, high latitudes near the poles. The blue arrow indicates Goldschmidt crater, a large feldspar-rich region with a higher water and hydroxyl signature.
These images show a very young lunar crater on the side of the moon that faces away from Earth, as viewed by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. On the left is an image showing brightness at shorter infrared wavelengths. On the right, the distribution of water-rich minerals (light blue) is shown around a small crater. Both water- and hydroxyl-rich materials were found to be associated with material ejected from the crater.
In this movie (click image to view the movie), images taken at wavelengths not visible or discernable to the human eye are assigned colors, revealing the invisible "colors" of the moon. While our eyes are sensitive to wavelengths from about 0.4 to 0.75 micrometers, the Moon Mineralogy Mapper measured energy from the moon from 0.45 through 3 micrometers, well into the infrared portion of the light spectrum. The instrument has a spectrometer that splits the wavelength range into 86 images, or bands, in one mode, and 260 bands in its higher-resolution mode.
The animation takes a random walk through the data, with various combinations of images systematically assigned colors of red, green and blue. Different colors show various minerals and water on the surface of the moon. This is a sampling of just some of the data -- more information is contained in the whole Moon Mineralogy Mapper data set.
This is an early mineral map derived from the different reflected light, or spectral, signatures, measured by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper on board the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. The green, purple and blue areas are covered with iron-rich lava flows. These are similar to the lava flows of Hawaii. The red and pink regions contain the mineral plagioclase. Plagioclase is one of the minerals found in granite rocks on Earth, such as the granite of Yosemite National Park. More images and details from all three NASA instruments can be viewed here: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/moonm3-images.html
Image of Earth from the Moon acquired by the NASA Discovery Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) that is a guest instrument onboard the ISRO Chandrayaan-1 Mission to the Moon. Australia is visible in the lower center of the image. The image is presented as a false color composite with oceans dark blue, clouds white, and vegetation enhanced green. The data were acquired on the 22nd of July 2009 during a local solar eclipse.
ISRO's Terrain Mapper Camera also captured the eclipse. Shown below are two images in the sequence showing the shadow of the Moon as it crossed from China into the Pacific ocean.
The left figure is a color composite of processed data that accentuates compositional differences in the moon's Orientale region. The image on the right contains significant thermal emission in the signal and is particularly sensitive to small variations in local morphology. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Brown Full image and caption
