LIBS confirms the presence of sulphur on the lunar surface | Hacker News Reader

LIBS confirms the presence of sulphur on the lunar surface

isro.gov.in

108 pointsmerrier83 comments

There's a flurry on new info. In particular the variance of surface temperature at the lunar south pole, from 60 degree Celsius on the lunar surface, to -10 degree Celsius if you probe just 8cm below the surface

https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FF4hsyEQaEAAB-AS.png

A whole seventy degree temperature difference over such a small height delta. There were a bunch of scientists trying to explain this on Indian news TV & it was quite amazing.

I'm actually very happy in ages! As an immigrant there is this bittersweet relationship with the home country. You want your home country to do well but at the same time you are hyperaware of its numerous deficiencies. I haven't been back to India in a few decades now. But so much science! And presented in such down to earth language. Its really like watching some of the old Apollo footage where you can actually understand the scientist. He's using simple graphs & charts & simple math to make his point, instead of drowning you in technojargon.

Their project scientist is a very ordinary guy with extremely average test scores, for an Indian aspirant. But this chap persisted & pursued his education throughout his adulthood, finally earning his PhD in aeronautics. He comes from a shithole village that is about 50km from my shithole village. I mean, growing up we didn't have fucking electricity until my teens. No proper drinking water. No phone no TV no nothing. Now he gets to put a rover on the moon! I had tears in my eyes at the end of his TV interview.

https://urlis.net/npi7rk3q

As a native born American (USA) and long time lover of al things space, I've always been of the opinion that ISRO really punches above their weight. You look at their success and resources vs Roscosmos and it is crazy. India has built a really good native launch capability for overall very affordable prices totally independently. It speaks extremely highly of the engineering and materials scientists in that program.

There's no need for this to be bittersweet. Use this as fuel to show that India can do better in other areas if they focus on it. Take the win :)

Also, every extraordinary or above average person starts out average at some point. The biggest differentiator is perseverance. He kept it up and look what he's doing now! It is amazing and as a fellow space fan I'm so happy to see what they are sharing from the Chandrayaan mission.

Honestly super happy for India for pulling this off. People don't seem to acknowledge the amount of science that's been coming out of India for a long time now and I hope this enlightens people a little on the fact that the country has a lot of strong intellect to share with the world.

Seconded. India has some terrific development culture.

Thank you for sharing your perspective. It's nice to read something positive once in a while! :)

Cannot this gradient be used for some sort of heat pump? Or is it more effective to just outright collect the photons with solar panels.

The gradient is there for the exact same reason that you your pump won't reach a lot of material and will just create a hot mini-island near you heat exchanger.

> Their project scientist is a very ordinary guy with extremely average test scores, for an Indian aspirant.

Almost like test scores don't tell the whole story and aren't a great measure of a human's potential... (I'm sure you get this, but I wish it wasn't a topic)

On that graph: isn't it conventional for the independent variable (in this case, depth) to be on the x-axis?

But "depth" is literally the down direction, so I think it's also acceptable to do this y/x thing. I've seen this choice in other places too,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Standard_Atmosphere#/medi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Titan#/media/File:T...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocline#/media/File:Thermo...

https://www.dataanalytics.org.uk/reversing-the-axis-of-an-ex...

"sometimes you want to make a plot that reflects the real situation rather than a plain mathematical one"

What does this point to- https://urlis.net/npi7rk3q?

Can't access it. Could you please share the original link or a link that works?

looks like HN hug-of-death, sorry about that.

https://www.indiatoday.in/science/chandrayaan-3/story/chandr...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMbpU_viwvA

https://www.latestly.com/agency-news/india-news-vikram-lande...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrr1-XrCoDU

Nice story. I watched the landing live it was quite exciting, it's great to see how the entire world is starting to join the space voyage.

Please edit provocations and swipes out of your comments here. The provocation "shithole" led to a bunch of flamewar that I'm certain you didn't intend, and yet your comment is responsible for starting it. (I've detached those subthreads as offtopic and collapsed them, but they can be found at the bottom of the page.)

The site guidelines specifically include rules to prevent this kind of thing, so it would be good to review them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Your comment was otherwise fine, so I'm going to downweight this reply to the bottom of the subthread.

(Oh, but also please don't use link shorteners on HN.)

I felt like it was okay-ish given he immediately qualified his own, nearby hometown with the same descriptor. I think it changed the effect from discriminatory to almost a term of chagrined endearment which lent weight to his subsequent commentary.

Would I have written it myself? Probably not, especially given who recently popularized the term "shithole". But I think as a rhetorical device it did what he wanted it to in his writing.

That's nicely put and of course I agree! but the problem is that such subtleties don't survive the statistics of a large forum. Even if 95% of readers get it, the 5% who don't are enough to derail the thread. Even if 95% of that 5% are willing to move on, that leaves 0.25% of readers triggered—more than enough to turn any thread into a flamewar.

It's similar to this dynamic that comes up fairly often:

  User: $group is so $pejorative
  Mod:  Please don't post slurs to HN
  User: But I'm one of $group

It's fine conversation in a cohesive context (e.g. friends over drinks), but that's precisely what a large forum like HN is not. That's why we have to moderate comments by effect, not intent [1], and that's why the burden is on commenters to disambiguate their intent [2]. The cost is a certain blandness [3], but the alternative is the end of HN as an interesting place.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Totally tangential: Did you see the Indian 4x400m relay team made the world finals, but in qualifying, dared to try to pass the US team on the final leg? India has never had a particularly good track and field team, but allegedly they are encouraging running and fitness more there.

For those that don't know, the US 4x400m relay team in track and field is about the most dominant thing ever. If they don't drop the stick, it is assumed they are going to win. Even the qualifier team virtually always wins the heats. So an unknown like India having the temerity to try to take the lead against the US team is a huge shot across the bow.

It seemed significant for other reasons. First, based on very light googling and looking at names, the team was of mixed religion with two Muslims (two guys with Muhammed first names) and two Hindi-seeming names. They seemed to genuinely like each other and support each other. That might have progressive steps for the long standing religious conflicts in India, that a mixed religion team came together for a historic moment in Indian athletics.

Second, track might be a very interesting sport for "echoes of caste system" India (there was just a Caste news on HN a day ago so it's still obviously somewhat important). Unlike any team sport with selection, in track, if you are faster, well .... you're faster. Doesn't matter the race / religion / caste / connections, if you can run a 50 second 400m and the other guy runs a 53, it is VERY apparent who wins or should be selected for a team. Track and fitness in general is a kind of class-smasher in that regard, and could be a harbinger of big (positive) social change.

But maybe I'm reading a bit too much into a small sample.

Also, an Indian won the Javelin throw, beat a Pakistani who got silver, and there were two other Indians in the top six.

Not a space exploration expert. It seems like the presence of sulfur on the Moon has been known for a long time [1] but perhaps it's newsworthy that sulfur is more abundant in some regions (like the south pole) than previously thought. [1] says that sulfur has broad applications, most importantly the ability to be a substitute for water in mechanical and chemical processes.

[1] https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Lunar-Bases-confere...

It also found a a remarkable temperature gradient on the South Pole's surface. Even if the surface temperature is 60+ degree Celsius just 8 cm below the surface the temperature is -10 degree Celsius. (South Pole) Moon dust is a really good insulator.

That (60 C) is far hotter than I would have guessed. I realize the moon doesn't have an atmosphere, but at the south pole the light should be tangent to the surface. Is the probe not actually at -90 degrees latitude, and was this measurement taken at noon?

The moon is actually about the same albedo as asphalt. Gets hot in the sun.

The moon has a tilt so the amount of light at the poles can vary over time.

It's 60 C colder than noon temps at the equator

> ISRO announced the rover’s LIBS results definitively confirm the presence of sulfur at the landing site. Additionally, preliminary scans detect traces of aluminum, iron, calcium, chromium, titanium, manganese, silicon, and oxygen in the soil. Further hydrogen detection efforts are underway.

What about hydrogen? No hydrogen means no water where they're currently landed, right?

The reason people think there will be water is that when water evaporates on the moon, it won't be instantly lost. Instead, it will bounce around for a while before it is (probabilistically) lost. If/when it hits a surface that's below freezing point in vacuum (~200K), it can instead freeze and stick to that surface.

There are believed to be such surfaces in permanently shadowed craters on the poles of the moon. They won't find any in any place where the rover can charge, but they might do short trips into shadowed spots, I don't know.

Probably elemental hydrogen.

They certainly won't find water on a 60C surface.

Why not?

Plenty of 60C water on the earth's surface.

The moon doesn't have an atmosphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_diagram#/media/File:Phas...

Ah nice, missed that thanks.

Is there? Hottest surface temp recorded on earth was 56.7C, no? And Death Valley isn't known for the presence of water (when it's anywhere close to that hot).

> Hottest surface temp recorded on earth was 56.7C, no?

Hottest air temperature at just above surface level; excluding several localized extremes like measurements around vulcanos or asphalt roads.

Asphalt surfaces can easily reach 60+°C on days with direct sunlight and little to no wind, and vulcanos supply new surface all the time with temperatures far north of 100°C.

And in both cases those surfaces would turn water into vapor, so no surface water.

Hot springs in volcanically active areas?

Do you think that there might be hot springs on the Moon? Why not... our volcanoes on Earth bring water to the surface. That sounds like the kind of discovery that this mission is all about.

No hot springs without atmosphere, and we'd see vapor vents if there were something similar exposed to the surface, I think.

but not in the vacuum. At 60C on the moon, the water is just gas and would leave the moon a long time ago.

LIBS?

A clearer title of Chandrayaan-3 Rover confirms presence of sulphur on the lunar surface instead of the cryptic LIBS reference would have sufficed. Even the title on the official post there with it's "...unambiguous in-situ measurements" ... is weird.

The Chandrayaan programme is driven by ISRO, India's national space agency. It could thus be argued that, by extension, the Modi government is thoroughly owning the LIBS.

Preliminary analyses, graphically represented, have unveiled the presence of Aluminum (Al), Sulphur (S), Calcium (Ca), Iron (Fe), Chromium (Cr), and Titanium (Ti) on the lunar surface. Further measurements have revealed the presence of manganese (Mn), silicon (Si), and oxygen (O). Thorough investigation regarding the presence of Hydrogen is underway.

It seems to me, we know there is hydrogen because we know there is water. Not to say they shouldn't test it anyway, but that's my layman's understanding of the current science.

What is the significance of each element being found?

The main issue is detection of water, which would show up as hydrogen in the elemental analysis. Failure to detect hydrogen is probably the most significant result at present:

https://www.space.com/chandrayaan-3-moon-south-pole-why-nasa...

Would we know already if water was coming up from the lunar depths?

Probably the floors of craters never subjected to direct sunlight at the poles would be the most likely surface indication. The rover had to navigate around a crater, might have been the place to look if they had the capability.

It might be possible to gather them and build a crude weapon to defeat the Gorn.

One small step for man, one giant leap for Gorn combat.

Less resources to be shipped from Earth for future habitats/missions that require a lunar base.

How were they able to rule out from-Earth contamination as the source of the sulphur?

So, aluminium sulphur batteries and ferroaluminum structures ?

This means there are demonic presences on the moon.

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