Chr. Science Monitor, Guardian, etc: A year after launch, lunar orbiter doing a divine job
It’s not easy to figure out, via search engine and not much time, who in NASA’s extended community of staffers, contractors, and academic scientists and engineers decided to call a chunky little instrument with a swivel head the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment. No sign of its etymology at its UCLA website, but isn’t Diviner a sublime name for something that senses the nature of things from a distance? Words with religious or superstitious overtones tend to have such stirring punch – no wonder even non-believers borrow them often and to great effect (other examples include transcendence, exaltation, ecstasy, and awe, all useful to science journalists among others). But somebody at UCLA or elsewhere likes words – elsewhere on the instrument team’s site (see link in Grist below) one sees reference not to the prosaic field of view of the instrument, but to its field of regard. Lovely.
Onward. The field of regard of the Diviner LRE has, from its perch on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, been swept up, down, and sideways across the moon for a year now. The gadget is mainly a radiometer for measuring surface temperatures on the moon that range from hot enough to boil water down to and probably well below that of liquid oxygen. Its multiple channels also give good evidence of mineralogy.
The news is that, in Science today, are two reports on Diviner data revealing a far more bewildering mosaic of rock types on its surface than the textbooks anticipate, including splotches of granitic-looking rock among all the basalts. A third report, from the probe’s laser altimeter team, describes new details seen in its craters, plains, and mountains and, indirectly, its bombardment history. Most press releases, alas (to me), focus on the laser altimetry topography map, rendered in pretty colors. Nearly all news reports follow that line of least resistance. We knew already the moon is beat up, a Rosetta stone to planetary accretion, and like that. Almost no attention is paid in media to reports from the different LRO teams using the Diviner instrument confirming and in some cases discovering mineral formations of great complexity. Maybe it’s just me but the mineralogy seems to be the newest news here. Or perhaps the Diviner label on a piece of hardware has me entranced.
Stories:
- Guardian (UK) Ian Sample: Map of moon’s craters reveals our satellite’s cataclysmic past ; Sample attends only to the altimetry and new crater counts, not at all to the minerals divined.
- Register (UK) Lester Haines: NASA reveals Moon’s ‘turbulent youth’ ; Paige also does craters almost entirely. The Register also does its usual thorough on line job with illus, providing links directly to NASA and other sites for explanation of what the pictures show.
- Christian Science Monitor – Pete Spotts: The moon as solar system’s Rosetta stone? ;
- Wired Science – Jess McNally: Moon Crater Map REveals Early Solar System History ; Good story, and superb gallery of IRO images.
- Sky & Telescope – Kelly Beatty: The Moon Through LRO’s Eyes ; No surprise that this specialty pub and this veteran writer have the most knowing write up. He leads on the cratering and altimetry, but gets into the mineralogy. Beatty also salutes the word “silicic,” saying it seems to be all consonants.
Dept. of Old Hardware: LRO, among other things, took photos that revealed where the old Soviet Lunokhod 2 rover stalled and died 37 years ago after driving across the moon’s soil for 20 miles. That story is told well by this blogpost in March. Among the spritelier news accounts was this NPR All Things Considered report on the man who bought the derelict machine, sight unseen to a remarkable degree, at auction.
Grist for the Mill:
UCLA Diviner Lunar Rad. Experiment site ; NASA-Goddard Press Release mostly on lunar altimetry ; UCLA Press Release on diverse minerals; NASA LRO site ;
- Charlie Petit
