Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Tuesday, October 26th.  The sun will rise at 8:12.  It’ll be up for 10 hours and 28 minutes, setting at 6:40.   The moon, half way from full to last quarter, will rise at 8:51 this evening.  |  There are now more results from the LCROSS spacecraft collision in an eternally shadowed crater on the moon a bit more than a year ago.  These came from the Wall Street Journal.  I’ll assume that these results are preliminary too.   Despite the disappointing show for TV viewers of this event including yours truly, there was a measurable plume that resulted in the discovery of the hoped for water plus hydrogen, ammonia, methane, plus the metals mercury, sodium and silver.  The percentage of the soil kicked up was nearly 6 percent water or rather ice.  If the astronauts can get to the rugged south pole of the moon to process the soil into water they will save the approximately $50,000 a pound to haul it up from the earth.