Academic Aspects of Lunar Water Resources and Their Relevance to Lunar Protolife

Green, Jack

doi:10.3390/ijms12096051

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…These gases will be drawn outward and deposited on the lunar surface. Green (2011) reports that "common terrestrial fumarolic fluids may include water (H 2 O), carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), sulfur (S), sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ), carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dichloride (SCl 2 ), methane (CH 4 ), ethane (C 2 H 6 ), carbonyl sulfide (COS), hydrogen sulfide (H 2 S), ammonia (NH 3 ), cyanogen (CN), and hydrogen cyanide (HCN) that are of major importance". Remote sensing data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has determined that the Moon holds a significant amount of frozen H 2 O and OH in and around its permanently shadowed regions (PSR) as shown in the left panel of Figure 4 (adapted from Sanin, et al, 2017) as a blue-shaded region over top of the lunar south pole image.…”

Section: Regions Of Closed Field Lines At High Latitudesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of the evolving early Moon and Earth magnetospheres

Green,

Boardsen,

Dong

2023

Front. Astron. Space Sci.

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Recently it has been identified that our Moon had an extensive magnetosphere for several hundred million years soon after it was formed when the Moon was within 20 Earth Radii (RE) from the Earth. Some aspects of the interaction between the early Earth-Moon magnetospheres are investigated by mapping the interconnected field lines between the Earth and the Moon and investigating how the early lunar magnetosphere affects the magnetospheric dynamics within the coupled magnetospheres over time. So long as the magnetosphere of the Moon remains strong as it moves away from the Earth in the antialigned dipole configuration, the extent of the Earth’s open field lines decreases. As a result, at times it significantly changes the structure of the field-aligned current system, pushing the polar cusp significantly northward, and forcing magnetotail reconnection sites into the deeper tail region. In addition, the combined magnetospheres of the Earth and the Moon greatly extend the number of closed field lines enabling a much larger plasmasphere to exist and connecting the lunar polar cap with closed field lines to the Earth. That configuration supports the transfer of plasma between the Earth and the Moon potentially creating a time capsule of the evolution of volatiles with depth. This paper only touches on the evolution of the early Earth and Moon magnetospheres, which has been a largely neglected space physics problem and has great potential for complex follow-on studies using more advanced tools and due to the expected new lunar data coming in the next decade through the Artemis Program.

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Section: Regions Of Closed Field Lines At High Latitudesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of the evolving early Moon and Earth magnetospheres

Green,

Boardsen,

Dong

2023

Front. Astron. Space Sci.

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“…In early Earth environments, SIMS-determined isotopic carbon evidence demonstrates that the age of Earth life's origin can be traced back to around 4 Ga ago (Brocks et al, 2005;Dodd et al, 2017). The atmosphere of early Earth is postulated to contain CO2, N2, H2S, SO2, CO, H2O, NH3, CH4, and H2 (Green, 2011). The Miller-Urey experiment and similar prebiotic Earth simulation vessels determined numerous organic molecules (e.g., alcohols, aldehydes, organic acids, nucleobases, amino acids, sugars) using HPLC, GC, or UV spectrophotometry (Table 2) (Miller, 1953;Oro, 1965;Bar-Nun and Hartman, 1978).…”

Section: Applications Of Instrumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection of biosignatures in terrestrial Mars analogs: Strategical and technical assessments

Shen¹,

Chen²,

Sun³

et al. 2022

Earth and Planetary Physics

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The search for potential signs of Martian life has been planned and implemented by worldwide countries for decades. Due to the high expenditure on Mars exploration, more easily accessible Marslike regions on Earth are invaluable targets for astrobiology research to understand the detection of potential Martian biosignatures. In order to detect potential life signals beyond Earth, questions on how to define life and biosignatures need to be carefully inspected. This review summarizes scientific instrumental techniques, our "eyes" and "hands", that facilitate identifying and quantifying biosignatures on Mars. Scientific devices that can be applied in astrobiology include electromagnetic spectrum-based spectrometers, mass spectrometers, redox potential indicators, circular dichroism polarimeters, in situ nucleic acid sequencers, life isolation/cultivation systems, and imagers. These techniques should be first tested in Mars analog extreme environments on Earth to validate their practicality on Mars. To better understand the instrumental detectability of biosignatures on Mars through its evolutionary history, terrestrial Mars analogs are divided into four major categories according to their similarities to different geological ages of Mars (the Early-Middle Noachian Period, the Late Noachian-Early Hesperian Period, the Late Hesperian-Early Amazonian Period, and the Middle-Late Amazonian Period). Future missions are suggested to explore more on the early terrains in Mars' Southern Hemisphere once the landing issue is solved engineeringly, since these explorations permit investigating a continuum of the habitability shift through Mars geological history. Moreover, practical applications of scientific instruments listed above are briefly reviewed based on the four categories of Mars analogs, and instruments applied for autonomous robotic rover tests in Mars analogs are further discussed. For engineering efficiency, a Mars rover ought to be equipped with as few assemblable instruments as possible. Therefore, once candidate landing regions 1 Biosignatures in Mars analogson Mars are defined, the portable suites of instruments should be smartly devised on the basis of the geological, geochemical, geomorphological, and chronological characteristics of the landing regions. Laboratory-based experiments without engineering restrictions are further encouraging and appealing if Mars sample-return missions are successfully completed. To exclude false positive and false negative conclusions in life discovery, the combined use and replication studies of multiple analytical techniques must be performed to confirm the observational results.

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“…In 2008, the LCROSS and LRO cooperated to impact the moon. Thermal imaging, near-infrared spectroscopy, ultraviolet spectroscopy and other technologies were used to identify water vapor in the impact sputtering, which proved the existence of water ice on the moon [14]. In 2010, the Mini-star radar, developed by NASA and carried on Luna I in India, detected more than 40 craters containing water ice in the north lunar pole, with an estimated content of ~600 million tons of water ice [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy saving, load bearing and attachment mechanism on ice and frozen ground of biomimetic mechanical foot

Li,

Zhang,

Pang

et al. 2024

PLoS ONE

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The frozen ground robot can be widely and prospectively applied in plentiful fields, such as military rescue and planet exploration. Based on the energy-saving, load-bearing, and attachment functions of reindeer hooves, we studied the kinematics of reindeer feet and designed a biomimetic energy-saving attachment mechanical foot (mechanical foot I) and two contrast mechanical feet (mechanical feet II and III). The energy-saving and load-bearing performances of the biomimetic mechanical foot were tested on a motion mechanics platform, which revealed this mechanical foot was adaptive to three types of ground (frozen ground, ice, and water ice lunar soil). Mechanical foot I possesses the functions of elastic energy storage and power consumption reduction, and its power range is from -2.77 to -27.85 W. Compared with mechanical foot III, the load-bearing ability of mechanical foot I was improved by the dewclaws, and the peak forces in the X, Y, and Z directions increased by about 2.54, 1.25 and 1.31 times, respectively. When mechanical foot I acted with more- smooth surface, the joint range of motion (ROM) increased, changes of the three-directional force at the foot junction decreased. The forces were the lowest on ice among the three types of ground, the X-, Y- and Z-directional changes were about 62.96, 83.7, and 319.85 N respectively, and the ROMs for the ankle joint and metatarsophalangeal joint of mechanical foot I were about 17.93° and 16.10°, respectively. This study revealed the active adaptation mechanism between the biomimetic mechanical foot and ice or frozen ground, and thus theoretically underlies research on the biomimetic mechanical foot.

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Academic Aspects of Lunar Water Resources and Their Relevance to Lunar Protolife

Cited by 6 publications

References 24 publications

Effects of the evolving early Moon and Earth magnetospheres

Effects of the evolving early Moon and Earth magnetospheres

Detection of biosignatures in terrestrial Mars analogs: Strategical and technical assessments

Energy saving, load bearing and attachment mechanism on ice and frozen ground of biomimetic mechanical foot

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