Substantial water reserves have been found beneath the Moon’s surface, Nasa announced yesterday, paving the way for
a permanent lunar base.
The discovery came from Nasa’s “moon bombing” mission, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)
probe, which was deliberately crashed into the lunar South Pole last month. An analysis of the dust thrown up from
the impact revealed the presence of about 80 litres of water, or enough for a shallow bath. The results suggest
that much larger, more accessible reserves are available at the poles.
“We can announce that we’ve found water — not just a little bit, a significant amount,” said Tony Colaprete,
principal investigator for the mission at Nasa’s Ames Research Centre in California.
The exact form of the water is not yet clear, but it is likely to be spread out in small ice crystals. The rocket
hit the Moon at an area where the surface temperature is around -230C. This region has not been in direct sunlight
for at least two billion years.
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The discovery comes at a good time for Nasa scientists, who are waiting for a White House decision on the future
funding for lunar exploration, expected to be announced in January.
The Bush administration had set the ultimate goal of a permanent lunar base, but this could require an additional
$3 billion a year on top of their $18 billion budget. Proposals for lunar settlements have all tended to rely
heavily on the assumption that water supplies would be discovered.
“These results may just be the key to Nasa’s plans to put man back on the Moon — the LCROSS team conducted a
beautifully simple experiment and it seems to have paid off,” said Chris Lintott, an astrophysicist from the
University of Oxford.
The results will also come as a relief to astrophysicists who watched the impact live on October 9. The $79 million
mission comprised two separate capsules, which were deliberately slammed into the Cabeus crater, around four
minutes apart. The trailing capsule was designed to make spectroscopic measurements of the contents of a 6km plume
of dust thrown up by the leading one. However, the impact was barely discernible and for several hours Nasa was
unable to confirm that a plume had been detected at all, after having initially said that it would be visible
through handheld telescopes from Earth.
Vincent Eke, from the University of Durham who helped the American space agency pick the location, said that the
much smaller plume may have been a result of the large quantities of water. A high proportion of the capsule’s
energy on impact would have gone into vaporising the ice, meaning there was less energy left to kick the dust up to
high altitudes.
Scientists are now hoping to establish the origin of the water. One possibility is that it was deposited by comets,
over as long as billions of years, meaning it could hold important clues to the history of the solar system.
info came from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article6916297.ece
Posted by Brandon at 9:42 PM 0 comments
Labels: news
U.S. Treasury Confident Congress Will Increase Debt Ceiling
By Rebecca Christie
Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration is confident Congress will raise the country’s debt limit by year
end to avert a showdown similar to the one that shuttered parts of the government in 1995, administration officials
said.
The White House wants an increase of at least $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, according to a person familiar with the
deliberations between lawmakers and the administration. Record budget deficits are pushing the national debt closer
to the $12.1 trillion statutory limit.
The administration’s request, higher than a proposed increase already passed in the House of Representatives, would
get the government through the November 2010 midterm congressional elections without needing another increase.
Earlier this month, Treasury officials acknowledged they’ll need more borrowing room by year-end to avoid market
disruptions.
“Market participants still remain on edge, especially since many have concerns over the rising debt loads that were
kicked off this year,” said George Goncalves, chief fixed- income rates strategist in New York at primary dealer
Cantor Fitzgerald LP.
The administration officials said the White House is open to any legislative vehicle that will raise the debt
limit, by any amount. Although the Obama administration has pledged to bring deficits down to “sustainable” levels
in the longer term, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has focused recently on the need to keep up spending on
economic assistance programs until the unemployment rate, which reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent in October,
comes down.
TARP Savings
To rein in the 2010 deficit, the administration will save as much as it can from unused portions of the $700
billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, another administration official said. Treasury data show that the
administration has more than $200 billion in uncommitted TARP funds.
One Treasury official said the memory of the 1995 budget standoff should be motivation to avoid another showdown.
In that confrontation, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich battled with the White House over federal budget bills,
forcing President Bill Clinton to shut the government down temporarily.
With the economy still in the early recovery stage, Congress understands the stakes and doesn’t want to fuel
investor concern, the official said.
Republicans in Congress are seeking to link the debt limit to the debate over health-care spending, while Democrats
prefer to keep the two issues separate. The Senate Budget Committee has proposed a commission to look into the
nation’s fiscal health, which backers say should be a condition of any debt limit increase.
‘Not Right’
“We’re seeing deficits projected for the next 10 years of over a trillion dollars a year,” said Senator Judd Gregg
of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, in congressional comments last week. “It’s not
sustainable. It’s not fair, and it’s not right.”
Treasury debt-management director Karthik Ramanathan told bond market participants in Washington last week to
expect another year of government debt sales of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in fiscal year 2010, which began Oct.
1, according to minutes of the meeting.
For fiscal year 2009, which ended Sept. 30, the U.S. racked up a $1.4 trillion deficit, and the Congressional
Budget Office in August predicted a deficit this year of about the same size.
Treasury officials also have said they have less maneuvering room than in the past. Tactics such as tapping federal
retirement funds would free up roughly $150 billion - about the same amount as the interest payments that come due
on Dec. 31.
Temporary Measures
“Depending on the date that we hit the debt limit, they could last days or at most weeks,” compared with five or
six months in previous debt-limit impasses, said Matthew Rutherford, deputy assistant Treasury secretary for
federal finance, in a press conference last week.
Forecasting a precise date for a debt-ceiling collision is difficult because the government’s cash flows are
“volatile,” the Treasury said last week, adding that it would keep markets and lawmakers notified of developments.
The department said it could need extra immediate cash because there’s so much uncertainty surrounding incoming
taxes and outgoing spending on fiscal stimulus and financial market stabilization programs.
“Debt ceiling showdowns used to be long, drawn-out affairs,” said Louis Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP
in Jersey City, New Jersey. “Things come to a head much faster when your cash burn rate averages more than $100
billion a month.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Rebecca Christie in Washington at rchristie4@bloomberg.net
info came from http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601074&sid=aWXDnpFProiY
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