A lunar rock opera

Good morning! It may well be a bittersweet ending for Chandrayaan-3. Bitter, because its lander Vikram and rover Pragyan aren’t waking up despite Isro’s best efforts. Sweet, because the duo succeeded in collecting valuable data before going into sleep mode. A lot has been said about water ice on the moon’s south pole, but did you know that lunar soil also contains sulphur? The evidence of that, confirmed by Pragyan, holds tremendous significance. Read on to know more. Plus: a curated list of the week’s best longreads.

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In an exciting milestone for lunar scientists around the globe, India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down 375 miles (600 km) from the south pole of the Moon on Aug. 23, 2023.

In just under 14 Earth days, Chandrayaan-3 provided scientists with valuable new data and further inspiration to explore the Moon. And the Indian Space Research Organization has shared these initial results with the world.

While the data from Chandrayaan-3’s rover, named Pragyan, or “wisdom” in Sanskrit, showed the lunar soil contains expected elements such as iron, titanium, aluminium and calcium, it also showed an unexpected surprise – sulphur.

India’s lunar rover Pragyan rolls out of the lander and onto the surface.

Planetary scientists like me have known that sulphur exists in lunar rocks and soils, but only at a very low concentration. These new measurements imply there may be a higher sulphur concentration than anticipated.

Pragyan has two instruments that analyse the elemental composition of the soil – an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and a laser-induced breakdown spectrometer, or LIBS for short. Both of these instruments measured sulphur in the soil near the landing site.

Sulphur in soils near the Moon’s poles might help astronauts live off the land one day, making these measurements an example of science that enables exploration.

Geology of the Moon

There are two main rock types on the Moon’s surface – dark volcanic rock and the brighter highland rock. The brightness difference between these two materials forms the familiar “man in the moon” face or “rabbit picking rice” image to the naked eye.

Scientists measuring lunar rock and soil compositions in labs on Earth have found that materials from the dark volcanic plains tend to have more sulphur than the brighter highlands material.

Sulphur mainly comes from volcanic activity. Rocks deep in the Moon contain sulphur, and when these rocks melt, the sulphur becomes part of the magma. When the melted rock nears the surface, most of the sulphur in the magma becomes a gas that is released along with water vapour and carbon dioxide.

Some of the sulphur does stay in the magma and is retained within the rock after it cools. This process explains why sulphur is primarily associated with the Moon’s dark volcanic rocks.

Chandrayaan-3’s measurements of sulphur in soils are the first to occur on the Moon. The exact amount of sulphur cannot be determined until the data calibration is completed.

The uncalibrated data collected by the LIBS instrument on Pragyan suggests that the Moon’s highland soils near the poles might have a higher sulphur concentration than highland soils from the equator and possibly even higher than the dark volcanic soils.

These initial results give planetary scientists like me who study the moon new insights into how it works as a geologic system. But we’ll still have to wait and see if the fully calibrated data from the Chandrayaan-3 team confirms an elevated sulphur concentration.

Atmospheric sulphur formation

The measurement of sulphur is interesting to scientists for at least two reasons. First, these findings indicate that the highland soils at the lunar poles could have fundamentally different compositions, compared with highland soils at the lunar equatorial regions. This compositional difference likely comes from the different environmental conditions between the two regions – the poles get less direct sunlight.

Second, these results suggest that there’s somehow more sulphur in the polar regions. Sulphur concentrated here could have formed from the exceedingly thin lunar atmosphere.

The polar regions of the Moon receive less direct sunlight and, as a result, experience extremely low temperatures compared with the rest of the Moon. If the surface temperature falls below -73 degrees C (-99 degrees F), then sulphur from the lunar atmosphere could collect on the surface in solid form – like frost on a window.

Sulphur at the poles could also have originated from ancient volcanic eruptions occurring on the lunar surface, or from meteorites containing sulphur that struck the surface and vaporised on impact.

Lunar sulphur as a resource

For long-lasting space missions, many agencies have thought about building some sort of base on the Moon. Astronauts and robots could travel from the south pole base to collect, process, store and use naturally occurring materials like sulphur on the Moon – a concept called in-situ resource utilisation.

In-situ resource utilisation means fewer trips back to Earth to get supplies and more time and energy spent exploring. Using sulphur as a resource, astronauts could build solar cells and batteries that use sulphur, mix up sulphur-based fertiliser and make sulphur-based concrete for construction.

Sulphur-based concrete actually has several benefits compared with the concrete normally used in building projects on Earth.

For one, sulphur-based concrete hardens and becomes strong within hours rather than weeks, and it’s more resistant to wear. It also doesn’t require water in the mixture, so astronauts could save their valuable water for drinking, crafting breathable oxygen and making rocket fuel.

While seven missions are currently operating on or around the Moon, the lunar south pole region hasn’t been studied from the surface before, so Pragyan’s new measurements will help planetary scientists understand the geologic history of the Moon. It’ll also allow lunar scientists like me to ask new questions about how the Moon formed and evolved.

For now, the scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization are busy processing and calibrating the data. On the lunar surface, Chandrayaan-3 is hibernating through the two-week-long lunar night, where temperatures will drop to -184 degrees F (-120 degrees C). The night will last until September 22.

There’s no guarantee that the lander component of Chandrayaan-3, called Vikram, or Pragyan will survive the extremely low temperatures, but should Pragyan awaken, scientists can expect more valuable measurements.

Jeffrey Gillis-Davis is Research Professor of Physics, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

This article is republished from https://theconversation.com under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article at https://theconversation.com/chandrayaan-3s-measurements-of-sulfur-open-the-doors-for-lunar-science-and-exploration-212950 

TECHTONIC SHIFT

Hard drive: Tesla’s biggest trial yet is unfolding as you read this. At the heart of the bitter legal battle in the US is the EV maker’s (in)famous and experimental self-driving technology. Autopilot has been the darling of Silicon Valley for many years, but is that attention—and investor money—warranted? In this week’s episode of TechTonic Shift, we discuss its sketchy past of autopilot, its applications in driving and flying, and why it should not replace humans at the wheel. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

ICYMI

A Messi a day…: …gets users to pay. Apologies for the poor rhyme, but that seems to be Apple’s strategy when it partnered with the greatest footballer of all time earlier this year. When Lionel Messi joined Major League Soccer side Inter Miami in July for a reported $50-plus million deal, it also included an agreement with Apple, which last year signed an exclusive 10-year deal worth $2.5 billion to be MLS’ broadcaster partner. Messi is getting a percentage of the revenue generated from new subscriptions to the MLS Season Pass. Apple wants to shake up the world of sports broadcasting, with some help from Messi. It’s doing things a bit differently to how traditional sports broadcasting deals have worked in the US. The brains behind it all is Eddy Cue, a longtime Apple executive who’s a huge sports fan. This piece in GQ goes deep into what Cue and Apple are trying to do.

New boss, old woes: When Linda Yackarinao joined X as its new CEO, the sentiment on the street was one of bemusement. How would a former ad-executive fit in with the ‘hardcore’ culture of an Elon Musk company? Ostensibly, Linda was brought over to placate the advertisers nervous about Musk’s antics. On that parameter, Linda has gained some ground. The client council has been revived, and so have relationships with former advertising partners. Her biggest challenge though seems to be her own boss. Linda was blindsided during major announcements like the X rebrand or the proposal to scrap the site’s blocking feature. Last month, Musk’s threat to sue the Anti-Defamation League, came days after Yaccarino boasted that the platform was building a productive partnership with the organisation. Events such as these have raised eyebrows about Linda’s role but what does Linda have to say on that? To find out, read this engrossing piece in the Financial Times.

The sickening: Contaminated farmland. Sludge in the waterways. Kidney disease, skin ailments, unusual forms of gastroenteritis, respiratory infections, multiple types of cancer, congenital birth defects. These are the outcomes of “America’s longest war”. Between 2001 to its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the US dropped more than 85,000 bombs on the country and in the process, unleashed chemical contamination. While the Biden administration has announced benefits for US veterans who suffered from toxic exposures, it’s done nothing to acknowledge—leave alone accept accountability—the horrors local Afghans live through. New Lines Magazine’s Lynzy Billing interviewed 26 medical practitioners and 52 locals who lived near US military bases for this harrowing on-ground report on the health and environmental costs of the US war in Afghanistan.

Who you gonna call? (Paper-Busters): It started as a satirical research paper which proved subjects who listened to the Beatles’ When I’m Sixty-Four grew younger. Now the trio that wrote it to demonstrate how data can be manipulated, use these methods to uncover fraudulent academic papers. This story in The Wall Street Journal profiles academics Nelson, Simmons, and Simonsohn and their project, called Data Colada. Together, they have torn apart high-profile research of celebrated academics. Among their targets is the former Stanford University president and the infamous research of Harvard professor Francesca Gino who was found to have manipulated data in a paper (ironically) examining dishonesty. Their work of debunking bad science comes at a crucial time: the number of retracted papers has been growing for more than a decade and the American public’s confidence in science is ebbing.

You can always get what you want: Before Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour was the US Trek in 1972. If Swift and Beyonce have redefined music tours as economic phenomena, reviving consumption and tax revenues in their wake, the Rolling Stones pioneered giant tours in the 1970s and changed the business forever. The bunch of old people that is the Rolling Stones is itself perhaps the oldest running music gig on earth. They have been together and touring for six decades, longer than many musicians have lived. And it has been held together by one man, Mick Jagger. As this Wall Street Journal story argues, Keith Richards is the musical nucleus of the band but it is the tension between him and Jagger, who it compares to an electron, that is the fount of the Stones’ creativity. But the longevity is entirely the 80-year-old Jagger’s doing, transforming making music into something akin to bookkeeping, unsentimental and deadline driven.

Gut and glory: Gene editing to prevent diseases and conditions is the frontier of modern medicine and UC Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna has been prowling that area for a very long time. Doudna won the 2020 Nobel Prize for coinventing the gene-editing tool Crispr. Doudna has now embarked on a new quest—genetically editing microbes in our stomachs…while they are still in our gut. The first target is an asthma-inducing gene in a microbe that inhabits infant guts. It’s like reprogramming the stomach while it goes about its work. It even means sometimes getting viruses to guide molecules into cells. These molecules are like programmers which edit the cell’s code. That’s not all of it. Doudna also believes she might be able to find a gene fix for toxic cow burp that’s choking the earth. It’s all quite mind-boggling. Wired has the low-down on the tech and the trials from the horse’s mouth.