After 40 years, since the first man walked on the moon NASA again has a reason to celebrate. Water on the moon was content of all news headlines last week. At Friday, Nasa announced that substantial water reserves have been found beneath the Moon’s surface. According to the analysis of the dust, which was collected as a result from rocket crash, scientist found at least 25gallons of water (94litres).
This news took a large media attention, and on the most of news websites get into top 10 of viewed.
I had read around 20 articles form all leading newspapers and TV websites as The Times online, Telegraph, Daily mail, The New York Times, Guardian, BBC, Time, Washington post etc. The may reason why I have red so many articles was to get better overview of the topic because it seams that media just partially presented the news, mostly based on information that they got form NASA. Even after I have done all this reading most of my questions, as who have rights to use the moons resources, who is in charge for the moon, what economic value those this discovery have, remains without any answers.
All articles published, in terms of content are more or less the same, the information represented is more if less the same. The statement “We can announce that we’ve found water - not just a little bit, but a significant amount” by Dr. Tony Cloaprete, principal investigation for the mission at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in California, and technical data that they got form NASA department. Even the headlines were consisted of three words water on moon, and even most of them took a large space on the papers, very small amount of practical and useful information, for an average reader could be found. Most of the statements from NASA scientists are presenting this epochal finding as historical point for understanding of solar system and give to it scientific significance, but nobody mention its economics and other values. Water on the moon is possible resource that could be used for drinking and making fuel from oxygen and hydrogen that can play the main role in space exploring and to improve the outlook for long-term human presence.
Articles in details explain LCROSS expedition and mission and the process of “Bombing the Moon”, but just couple of them were free enough to dare to go step further and give their opinion, comments and include some more information. Not even one of the American newspapers remained the public that this discovery was confirmation of the Indian space mission announced in September. This information could be found only by deeper analyses and mostly in British media. Even most of British articles reserved at least one line to announce the costs of $79million (£49million) for this expedition. Some of the British newspapers as The Times online wrote that this discovery came just in time for NASA scientists that are expecting White House decision for the future funding for lunar exploration. They reminded readers that Bush administration set the budget of $18billion annually for establishment of permanent lunar base and note the possibility that this project could require additional 3 billion dollars. I could not find any of these information in American newspapers, what gave me the impression that American news are avoiding to mention any costs.
The New Your Times, if we except cost, gave the best description, covering the story from couple of different aspects. Behind the technical information, which most of the newspapers are presenting in this article what could be found very interesting is information as a statement of Dr. Colaprete “There were squiggles in the data that indicated other molecules, possible carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, methane or more complex carbon-based molecules”. Further more, only in this article could it be found the information that lunar ice, behind its possibility to offer drinking water and rocket fuel, also give astronauts air to breathe. This Article also reveals NASA’s current exploration plans, which calls for a return of astronauts to the Moon by 2020, if anything the future of this project depends of the agency’s budget.
In conclusion, this is epochal discovery that will change the history. Even NASA’s published hypotheses that there is water on the moon in my opinion there the value of this detection will be much more than that. Mr Colaprete said “It wasn’t just water- there was a lot more interesting stuff in there” and this was a clear message that something more is going on behind the scene. It is very interesting that this sentence could be found in Washington post only, and even more interesting is that nobody did not raise a question what was he thinking about. Now, after the readings I have even more questions. Why did the media present only partial information? From the statement of Dr. Colaprete that there are more interesting stuff in there, it is more than obvious that he has a lot to talk about but why none of the media did a interview with him? Is he waiting testing results or his thoughts are government owned? The readings of the articles brought me to a conclusion that all of them are incomplete and that the real value of this discovery is privilege for the Space Explorer Company only.
Sources:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article6916297.ece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/6563654/Water-found-on-Moon-after-Nasa-bombing-mission.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1227595/NASA-discovers-significant-water-moon.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/14moon.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=water%20on%20moon&st=cse
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article6867876.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article6859492.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/nov/14/moon-nasa-water-discovery
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8359744.stm
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1939473,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/11/13/AR2009111301986.html
5/10 Not convinced of financial relevance
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