The thing is that money is ruling our current world and science is very expensive. Look around and notice where do we have the biggest technology progress: cars, electronics, pharmaceutics. All those areas are driven by businesses and consumers who buy all that stuff. By the way, if you haven’t seen the story of stuff I highly recommend it. So consumers pay big money for science development in these areas.

What about astronomy and space exploration. Sure it’s cool to watch satellites smash into the Moon and astronauts walking on Mars, but that’s about it — regular people don’t get any immediate benefit from it. Your bed is not softer, your car is not faster, your food is not tastier, so you don’t have a wish to pay for this kind of science, as simple as that.

While I like to talk about science, but there is no way we going to see any cool things in general science in the nearest future, not until our society is driven by money and looks like this is not going to change too. I am not telling that hungry scientists slaving 20 hours a day on a new spaceship is a good idea, just when you make your decisions in life don’t let money drive you. Money is a means, not a goal.

Nothing spectacular :) Unfortunately scientists did not say right away if they found water, more data analysis required. I am pretty sure, that if there were lots of water in that crater, then they would be able to confirm it right away. It means that even if water exists in dark Lunar craters there is not so much of it (which sucks).

We’ll have to build a base on Mars and skip the Moon ;)

Cabeus crater is a new target for the mission. Image from: chungyc.org

It is amazing for me to see how different teams from different countries can efficiently communicate and help each other. I hope this awesome mission will be a success and there will be enough water on the Moon, so we won’t have excuses not to build a permanent station there.

We already know that there is a bit water on the Moon, but for sure it would be great to find more. If you are interested in tiny details, read press release on LCROSS mission website.

1. Measure precise star position. If star has a planet, then planet affects star position, because they both circle around common center of mass. If you think that stars are too big and heavy to feel any gravitational effects from their planets, look at the picture below.

This is how center of mass (every Solar system object spins around this point) moved. As you see sometimes it even goes out from the Sun. Image from: answers.com

As you see planets in the Solar system make the Sun spin around common center of mass. Exoplanets can do this to their stars and we can detect (sometimes :-)) those position shifts and tell that star has a planet. But in order to do this very precise instruments are required and also this method works only for stars which are close to us.

There is a good possibility to find water in the craters which never see direct sunlight. Image from: wikinfo.org

How was water discovered? Well, there is still no direct evidence of it, but three different spacecrafts (India’s Chandrayaan-1, Cassini and Deep Impact spacecraft) detected that there is something with hydrogen+oxygen in there and they assumed that it’s water. That’s why I personally is not that much exited about that announcement. Still nothing can beat the direct water detection expected from LCROSS mission.

LCROSS spacecraft will drop a rocket stage to the Moon to see if water will fly out of the impact. After that it's going to crush itself there to sacrifice itself for the sake of science. Image credit: NASA

What does water give us? First of all if people would ever live there on a permanent basis, they will drink this water. Second, you can use water as a fuel (sounds fantastic, right?). It is possible to break water to hydrogen and oxygen using electricity (from solar panels for example). Later you can burn hydrogen and oxygen and use energy from burning to do some useful work (drive a lunar car for example). When you burn hydrogen and oxygen you get pure water, which you can split again later with electricity, etc… Pretty cool stuff and very eco-friendly as well ;)

Artist's conception for the Moon base. I don't know if I will live long enough to witness it. Image from: daviddarling.info

Where did water come from? There are two main hypothesis for that. One says that comets crushing into surface brought all the water (those comets which brought water to Earth, those comets which spread the life all over the Universe, blah-blah :), second hypothesis suggests that Solar wind (protons and hydrogen atoms) collide with Moon’s surface (which is 45% oxygen) form a bit of water.  Water presence on the Moon means a lot of good stuff for us if we ever are going to make a permanent lunar base — we can drink it, we can breath oxygen from it, we can burn it.

ISS is powered by solar panels. Click for slightly bigger image. Image credit: NASA, ESA

Problem with solar panels is that they still have to go some way to become a bit cheaper. For sure this technology has a good potential. For example solar cells which you currently can buy for your needs have about 16% efficiency, while solar panels used by Mars rovers are about 40% efficiency!

Solar energy is a very broad topic and unfortunately I don’t have too much time on my hands, so I decided to make a smaller website about RV solar panels. I think it is better to cover the small topic completely than have a never finished website. I believe solar panels is a good choice for RVs — you don’t need a big system to power it, so it’s not that expensive like the household solar system.

This yellow star in the middle of the picture has a rocky planet with density close to our Earth's. Star is only 500 light years away from us. Click for bigger image. Image credit: ESO

This is a good example of how quantity can transform into quality. We did not invent any revolutionary super cool stuff, but rather were gradually perfecting the detection methods and improving instrument precision. And today those small improvements paid off — they allowed to detect a first rocky world near another star.

Artist's impression of Corot-7b planet. This planet is very close to its Sun, so most likely it is covered with boiling lava. Click for bigger version. Image credit: ESO

If you want to get picture featured in this video, you can do it on ESO website. Different picture sizes available on the right hand side.

Cassini shot a picture of Titan’s surface through its atmospheric haze. You can see bright and dark regions on this image. Unfortunately we can not clearly say yet what are those features: hills, mountains or seas? It amazes me how we can view pictures shot so far away, and Saturn is far, way further than Mars, so I don’t think we can expect Titan rovers anytime soon.

Titan's surface through the clouds pictures by Cassini spacecraft. Scientists called this region Senkyo. Click for a bigger image. Picture credit: Cassini.