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Space/Science » in reply to No lunar ice on the poles

re: No lunar ice on the poles

From Raoul's link:

"This is much higher resolution than we've ever done before," said Campbell. "We put the nail in the coffin in terms of the fact that these high CPRs are correlated with presence of rocky, blocky material around young impact craters. The assumption of many people is that high CPRs must indicate the presence of water ice. What we're saying is, that might not be the case.

"There is always the possibility that concentrated deposits exist in a few of the shadowed locations not visible to radars on Earth," he added. "But any current planning for landers or bases at the lunar poles should not count on this."

No one is saying there isn't ice on the Moon. How much ice on the Moon is still a matter which in there is a high degree of uncertainty. And if there was 10 billion tonnes of ice [or more] on the lunar poles, there would still be a question about whether it would be minable or not.
As I've said before, the purpose of a NASA mission to Moon should be to explore the Moon- determine whether or not there is minable water on the Moon. If we already knew that they was or was not minable water on the Moon there would be less of a reason for the govt to explore the Moon.

Now, I believe it's been said that there is area about the size of California on the moon in the polar regions which does not receive sunlight. My question is how much of this unlit area can this radar detect? I suspect that it's detecting less than 10% of this area, but I would like to be shown to be wrong in my general assumption. It seems to me that there are million of square miles in the lunar polar region in which the sun never shines and Earth can never be seen on the horizon [the top of the earth can't be seen- nevermind that the equator can't be seen].

Finally I was a bit surprised that they could only get a 20 meter resolution. Can anyone expain why this is [and couldn't a network of ham radios do better?]

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