M3 Science Blog

At a press conference held today at NASA Headquarters (2:00pm Eastern Sept. 24,2009), the M3 team announced that spectral evidence for the presence of water and hydroxyl (OH) on the surface of the Moon exists in M3 data.  The evidence exists in the form of a strong absporption feature in the 3µm region of the electromagnetic spectrum that occurs in spectra for several areas of the Moon.  The feature is observed systematically across the Moon. Two other instruments, the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, and the High-Resolution Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (HRI-IR) on NASA’s EPOXI (Deep Impact) spacecraft, have confirmed the M3 observations.

The image below is a false-color composite showing the distribution of water and hydroxyl on the lunar surface in blue.  Variations in Fe-bearing mineralogy appear in the green and orange tones. Click the image to see all images released by NASA at the press conference.

Water/Hydroxyl detected at High Latitudes

To see details of the press conference, click here. The M3 paper can be found on the Science Express website. Also, this blog will be updated with new information in the coming days and weeks.

This Thursday at 2:00pm Eastern time NASA Headquarters will be holding a press conference that lunar science enthusiasts will not want to miss! At this press conference, some long awaited  and extremely exciting results from our mission will finally see the light of day.  We are incredibly excited to be able to share with the lunar science community and the world at large a finding that we’ve been keeping under wraps for months while we carefully and thoroughly performed our analyses.

Shortly after the telecon, we’ll post on this blog and our sister sites (here and here) all the supporting material that accompanies the press conference.

Here is the details of the press conference, as released by NASA HQ:

MEDIA ADVISORY: M09-183

NASA TO REVEAL NEW SCIENTIFIC FINDINGS ABOUT THE MOON

WASHINGTON — NASA will hold a media briefing at 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Sept. 24, to discuss new science data from the moon collected during national and international space missions. NASA Television and the agency’s Web site will provide live coverage of the briefing from the James E. Webb Memorial Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E St. SW, in Washington.

The briefing participants are:
- Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington
- Carle Pieters, principal investigator, Moon Mineralogy Mapper, Brown University
- Rob Green, project instrument scientist, Moon Mineralogy Mapper, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
- Roger Clark, team member, Cassini spacecraft Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer and co-investigator, Moon Mineralogy Mapper, U.S. Geological Survey in Denver
- Jessica Sunshine, deputy principal investigator for NASA’s Deep Impact extended mission and co-investigator for Moon Mineralogy Mapper, Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland

Reporters unable to attend the briefing may ask questions by telephone. To reserve a telephone line, journalists should e-mail their name, media affiliation and telephone number to Steve Cole at:
stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

Papers supporting the briefing will be published online by the journal Science at its Science Express Web site. Science will lift its embargo at 2 p.m. EDT, Sept. 24.

For more information about NASA TV downlinks and streaming video, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv