Reiner Gamma - Lunar Magnetic Anomaly - Near Side

[zorgon]

Clementine Satellite
Image Galleries
Clementine Lunar Image Browser 2.0



The Clementine Mission

On January 25, 1994, the Deep Space Program Science Experiment (DSPSE) (better known as Clementine) was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on a mission designed to test lightweight miniature sensors and advanced spacecraft components by exposing them, over a long period of time, to the difficult environment of outer space. In addition to testing the various sensors, Clementine was given the complex task of mapping the moon. The mission results were spectacular.

Between February 26 and April 22, 1994, Clementine was able to deliver more than 1.8 million digital images of the moon back to the Clementine ground network, including the NRL satellite ground-tracking station located in Maryland. These images were quickly accessible to the general public via the Internet and World Wide Web. When scientists reviewed the data from Clementine, they made a major scientific discovery: the possible existence of ice within some of the moon's craters. This discovery was confirmed in early 1998 by NASA's Lunar Prospector.

The Pentagon announced on December 3, 1996, that radar data acquired by the Clementine spacecraft indicated ice in the bottom of a crater on the South Pole of the Moon. Although it is never lit by the Sun, there are a few images of the South Pole available for viewing.

The BMDO assigned responsibility for the Clementine spacecraft design, manufacture, integration, and mission execution to the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) provided lightweight imaging sensors developed under the sponsorship of BMDO. Clementine launched on a Titan IIG expendable launch vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in January 1994. During its two month orbit of the Moon it captured 1.8 million images of the Moons surface.

Warning: Dot Mil site
SOURCE http://www.nrl.navy.mil/clm/

This version of the Browser is difficult to use as the mouse pointing has been removed and you must know the co-ordinates. It is further difficult because the values of latitude you can find online are not the same as the NAVY uses so you need to know how to convert. We have not spent much time yet looking on this data set, but as it is the same as the color set there is little point.

This document however shows clearly that it was NOT a NASA project and the images went to the NRL tracking station. 1.8 million images were taken but only a small portion made it to the public.

[zorgon]

Subject: Discovery of Ice on the Moon

U.S. Department of Defense
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs)
News Transcript

Presenter: Dr. Dwight Duston, Assistant Deputy for Technology
Ballistic Missile Defense Organization;    December 04, 1996 1:45 PM EST

DoD News Briefing

Tuesday, December 3, 1996 - 1:45 p.m.

Subject: Discovery of Ice on the Moon
Dr. Dwight Duston, Assistant Deputy for Technology, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization;
Dr. Paul Spudis, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Rice University;
Dr. Stewart Nozette, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory;
Col. Pedro Rustan, USAF, Director, Small Satellite Program, National Reconnaissance Office;
Christopher L. Lichtenberg, Head, RF Active System Section, Naval Research Laboratory; and
Col. Richard Bridges, USA, director, Defense Information, OASD(PA).

Q: What's the presumptive volume of it then, and how did you discern that?

A: As I mentioned, what we can tell from looking at the radar return is roughly the area that is covered by this. Assuming it reflects ice like ice on Mercury -- making that assumption. That's been well looked at. Then in order to see this back scatter effect, this roadside reflector effect; it's estimated that we have to see some number of wavelengths of our radar into the ice. In reviewing the paper, several of the reviewers posited we probably need to see somewhere between 50 and 100 wavelengths. So our wavelength is about six inches. So at the thickest case, it's roughly 50 feet.

Q: That translates to what in volume?

A: We were very conservative in the press release, but if you take basically 100 square kilometers by roughly 50 feet, you get a volume of something like a quarter of a cubic mile, I think it's on that order. It's a considerable amount, but it's not a huge glacier or anything like that.

Q: Can you compare that with something you know?

A: It's a lake. A small lake.

Warning Dot Mil site
http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=731

[zorgon]

Wherefore Art Thou Clementine?



The Mystery of Clementine Explored - Science Fiction or Truth?


Courtesy NASA/JPL

The Clementine Satellite

The Clementine satellite tested 23 advanced technologies during its mission for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. In fulfilling its scientific goals, Clementine provided a wealth of information relevant to the mineralogy of the lunar surface. Using six on-board cameras designed and built at the Laboratory, Clementine mapped the entire surface of the Moon at resolutions never before attained. Clementine also provided range data that will be used to construct a relief map of the lunar surface.

The first U.S. satellite to the Moon in more than two decades was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base (Santa Barbara County), California, on January 25, 1994.
The satellite was named Clementine because it carried only enough fuel to complete its mission before it was "lost and gone forever," as in the old ballad "My Darling
Clementine."

The satellite orbited the Moon for more than two months beginning February 19, 1994 taking and transmitting high-resolution pictures and range data until it built up a detailed map of the entire lunar surface. Clementine completed its lunar orbit on May 3, 1994, sending back more than 1.5 million images of the Moon.

Clementine's primary mission was to demonstrate in the harsh environment of space advanced, lightweight technologies developed by the Department of Defense for detecting and tracking ballistic missiles.

Excerpt...
Clementine completely mapped the lunar surface in 14 discrete spectral bands ranging
from the near ultraviolet (0.415 µm), through the visible spectrum, to the far infrared (9.5 µm).

Excerpt...
The last phase of the scheduled mission was to be a flyby of the near-Earth asteroid Geographos, which is about 5 km long and crosses Earth's orbit about every 18 months. Even though near-Earth asteroids tend to be much larger than missiles, Geographos would have provided a meaningful target as Clementine attempted a near-miss intercept using
the new sensor technologies.

Excerpt...
After successfully mapping the Moon, Clementine left lunar orbit and began its journey to Geographos on May 5. On May 7, however, one of the on-board processors failed and turned on the attitude-control thrusters, which sent the spacecraft into a spin (81 revolutions/minute). That failure drained the attitude-control system of its fuel (although there was still fuel for the main thruster), effectively canceling the Geographos portion of the mission. At this angular velocity, Clementine could still have flown to Geographos, but it would not have sent back useful images, and contact with it probably would have been lost. As a result, Clementine spent its final days orbiting Earth, continuing to collect lifetime data on the new on-board technologies.

SOURCE Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory PDF File

What I don't understand here is that the satellite left the moon May 5th on a path to the asteroid Geographos. Two days later on May 7th, it malfunctioned and lost the fuel for atitude control, and went into a spin. It had main thruster fuel. So how did a satellite spinning at 81 rpm manage to manuever out of its path to the asteroid and return to Earth, enter a stable geocentric orbit, and continue to take images over Earth?

Also the mission to the asteroid was scrubbed because the images wouldn't be useful (due to the spin?), but after this miraculous feat of returning to earth without an attitude-control system, insertion into orbit, and now its taking okay pictures of the Earth?

I am no rocket scientist, perhaps I am missing something 

This report also contains complete and irrefutable proof that they had the equipment to take visible light natural color images and did!

The Clementine Mission: Initial Results from Lunar Mapping

Excerpt:

After mapping the Moon, Clementine departed for a flyby of the asteroid 1620 Geographos on 3 May 1994. After a few days, while rehearsing the datacollection sequence for the asteroid flyby, a software fault resulted in the firing (until fuel depletion) of the attitude-control thrusters. The spacecraft was spun up to over 80 rpm and could not be de-spun. Thus, the asteroid portion of the mission was cancelled. After flying near the Moon on 20 July 1994, Clementine went into solar orbit: it is hoped that renewed contact with the spacecraft can be established, in which case we will collect engineering data to Earth so that we can monitor the health and degradation of its sensors in a deep-space, hard-radiation environment.

SOURCE Clementine Mission, The: Initial Results from Lunar Mapping

According to NASA this report says it left the Moon on May 3rd, then after the malfunction it went into a spin that could not be stopped. Yet it returns to fly past the Moon on July 20, 1994 then goes into a solar orbit... where they hope to be able to re-establish contact. In other words  IT'S STILL THERE

[zorgon]

Astrogeology Research Program USGS

Clementine was launched January 25, 1994, as a joint project between the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization and NASA. The objective of the mission was to test sensors and spacecraft components under extended exposure to the space environment and to make scientific observations of the Moon and a near-Earth asteroid (1620 Geographos). Due to a malfunction on May 7th, 1994, Clementine exhausted its fuel after the successful mapping of the lunar surface, and did not complete the visit to the asteroid.

SOURCE: Astrogeology USGS

This report says it EXHAUSTED its fuel... 

Naval Research Laboratory

The Pentagon announced on December 3, 1996, that radar data acquired by the Clementine spacecraft indicated ice in the bottom of a crater on the South Pole of the Moon. Although it is never lit by the Sun, there are a few images of the South Pole available for viewing.

SOURCE: NRL Naval Research Laboratory

This report has Clementine acquiring radar data in December 1996   

Scientific Visualization Studio

Covered this above...

Data Collected:
  HST: 2005/08/16 - 2005/08/21;
  Clementine:1998/02/07-1999/06/25

This source seems to indicate that there was new Data from Clementine from 1998 to 1999 

USGS Flagstaff

The following link is dead... found this in a cache file...
Task Force Report: Annex D

Clementine
launched 1994
1. map Moon;
2. visit Earth-crossing asteroid 1620 Geographos (but booster failed).
[Clementine 2 planned but on hold]

SOURCE: USGS Flagstaff Arizona

Okay, this one says booster failure not fuel shortage.... 
Clementine 2 on hold not vetoed...

[zorgon]

NASA NSSDC National Space Science Data Center


Credit: NASA NSSDC

Excerpt
Clementine was a joint project between the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO, nee the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, or SDIO) and NASA. The objective of the mission was to test sensors and spacecraft components under extended exposure to the space environment and to make scientific observations of the Moon and the near-Earth asteroid 1620 Geographos. The Geographos observations were not made due to a malfunction in the spacecraft. The lunar observations made included imaging at various wavelengths in the visible as well as in ultraviolet and infrared, laser ranging altimetry, gravimetry, and charged particle measurements....

Excerpt
Unfortunately, on May 7, 1994, after the first Earth transfer orbit, a malfunction aboard the craft caused one of the attitude control thrusters to fire for 11 minutes, using up its fuel supply and causing Clementine to spin at 80 rpm. Under these conditions, the asteroid flyby could not yield useful results, so the spacecraft was put into a geocentric orbit passing through the Van Allen radiation belts to test the various components on board. The mission ended in June 1994 when the power level onboard dropped to a point where the telemetry from the spacecraft was no longer intelligible.

SOURCE: NASA National Space Science Data Center

This NASA site has another variation of the story of Clementine. Now its not only taking photos of the Earth but studying the Van Allen Belt. DoD says 81 rpm, NASA says 80 rpm. Okay that is a small nit-picking amount I know, BUT these guys are rocket scientists, with the best computers, in a field where the slightest miscalculation could have drastic results... surely they could have their reports in agreement with each other?

This report ends Clementine June 1994. This one also says that Clementine was part of Strategic Defense Initiative Organization or "Star Wars" as it was called.

[zorgon]

President Clinton Clementine I

In 1994, President Clinton cited Clementine as one of the major national achievements in aeronautics in space. He stated "The relatively inexpensive, rapidly built spacecraft constituted a major revolution in spacecraft management and design; it also contributed significantly to lunar studies by photographing 1.8 million images of the surface of the Moon." The President was not alone in his praise of Clementine. In addition to the President's comments, Clementine and the people associated with the program were presented with the following awards:

    * Popular Science magazine: Best of 1994's Top 100 Technologies
    * Aviation Week and Space Technology: 1994 Laureate Award
    * National Space Club: Nelson P. Jackson Award
    * Rotary National Award for Space Achievement
    * Navy Award for Group Achievement
    * Discover magazine: 1994 Award for Outstanding Technological Innovation
    * 1996 Induction into the Space Hall of Fame

SOURCE

President Clinton Clementine II

27 October 1997 NEWS RELEASE:

The National Space Society was disappointed to learn of President Clinton's recent line-item vetos of several small military space programs. The Clementine 2 asteroid intercept mission, as with Clementine 1, would have been the most cost-effective approach to combining important technology demonstrations with real scientific missions.

SOURCE

The President praises and awards the Clementine I efforts but vetos launch of Clementine II. There is no Clementine II that we know of that would account for the discrepancies 

Minor Reports

After 1976, the Moon was ignored by space probes until the U.S. Department of Defense's new Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO, aka "Star Wars") flew the Clementine 1 probe to map the Moon's surface with modern instruments, in conjunction with NASA. Clementine 1 arrived at the Moon in February 1994...

Clementine 1 entered a polar orbit around the Moon in order to map its entire surface. Clementine 1 orbited the Moon for more than two months, totalling over 300 orbits, from February 19 to May 5, 1994. Clementine 1 left lunar orbit to rendezvous with near Earth asteroid 1620 Geographos, but a computer malfunction caused the spacecraft to fail before it reached the asteroid...

SOURCE

This one says Clementine was part of Star Wars, left lunar orbit and was a COMPUTER MALFUNCION. This report is adapted from the one below...

www.spds.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/neofact.html
{Above link gives me   "The connection has timed out"}
Clementine in Retrospect - Aerospace Conference, 1998 IEEE
{This one also says computer but the document is under subscription only}

[zorgon]

Clementine France

CLEMENTINE can be found in the following categories: Space & Earth Science

NORAD ID: 25978
Int'l Code: 1999-064B
Perigee: 607 km
Apogee: 620 km
Inclination: 98.3°
Period: 97 min
Launch date: 1999-12-03
Source: France (FR)
Comments: Intelligence gathering, part of an experimental eavesdropping program.
Clementine France

NSSDC ID: 1999-064B
Other Names: * 25978
Launch Date/Time: 1999-12-03 at 16:22:00 UTC
On-orbit Dry Mass: 50 kg
Description
Clementine France was a research satellite designed to study the Earth's radio-electric environment.

Discipline: Space Physics

Sponsoring Agency/Country: Unknown/France

A new Clementine... designened for science, but used for spying, by an unknown agency, launched in Dec 1999 (6 months after last "sighting" of Clementine I{see above})

Okay sure why not? Nothing odd about that..

[zorgon]

U.S. Department of Defense
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) - News Transcript

Presenter: Dr. Dwight Duston, Assistant Deputy for Technology, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization;

Tuesday, December 3, 1996 - 1:45 p.m.

Subject: Discovery of Ice on the Moon

Dr. Dwight Duston, Assistant Deputy for Technology, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization;
Dr. Paul Spudis, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Rice University;
Dr. Stewart Nozette, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory;
Col. Pedro Rustan, USAF, Director, Small Satellite Program, National Reconnaissance Office;
Christopher L. Lichtenberg, Head, RF Active System Section, Naval Research Laboratory; and
Col. Richard Bridges, USA, director, Defense Information, OASD(PA).

Abstract One: Re: Water Ice on the Moon

A: As I mentioned, what we can tell from looking at the radar return is roughly the area that is covered by this. Assuming it reflects ice like ice on Mercury -- making that assumption.That's been well looked at. Then in order to see this back scatter effect, this roadside reflector effect; it's estimated that we have to see some number of wavelengths of our radar into the ice. In reviewing the paper, several of the reviewers posited we probably need to see somewhere between 50 and 100 wavelengths. So our wavelength is about six inches.
So at the thickest case, it's roughly 50 feet.

Q: That translates to what in volume?

A: We were very conservative in the press release, but if you take basically 100 square kilometers by roughly 50 feet, you get a volume of something like a quarter of a cubic mile, I
think it's on that order. It's a considerable amount, but it's not a huge glacier or anything like that.

Q: Can you compare that with something you know?

A: It's a lake. A small lake.

Abstract Two: Re: Clementine and Starwars

A: However, there is still a space-borne component to our theater and national missile defense architecture, and that is the space-based infrared satellite. That will allow us to dotracking, particularly in boost and in the mid-course phases of the trajectory of a ballistic missile. So all the technologies that were demonstrated on Clementine are technologies that we would hope would be either used or would be the grand-daddies of technologies that we would eventually use in our space surveillance platforms. So that part of the space
architecture is still very much alive.

Q: But the role of the so-called Star Wars system now has shifted to more of a surveillance, as opposed to shooting something down...

A: No, it is still based on shooting down ballistic missiles by impact with interceptors. So this technology is important in order to track and pass the track files on to the interceptors in order to allow them to hit their targets. So it's very much a part of the architecture.

Abstract Three: Re: Where is Clementine Now

Q: Where is Clementine now?

A: The spacecraft, as you know, from the name Clementine, is only supposed to be here for a short period of time and be lost and gone forever, so it was intended for a very short period of time after this lunar mission, did a rendezvous with the earth, and shortly after that was shifted by the moon's gravity and continued a flight which will bring it back near the earth about nine years from now. So it's an 11 year total flight around the sun. So basically it's moving like a little planet around the sun, and it will bring it back close to us in about nine years... It's two years since it left us so it will be another nine years before it's back. (2005) But it's not useful right now. The mission is finished.

Q: But unlike it's namesake, it's not lost and gone forever. It will be back?

A: It will be back...

Okay, so we have a lake on the Moon that is a hundred square kilometers in area and 50 feet deep. Clementine WAS a Star Wars program and its still out there...

Not bad for a little lost spacecraft...

Source Document Department of Defense Archives
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=731

[zorgon]

***THE END***

Or is it?.....

[zorgon]

If you were going to make a base on the Moon... it seems that picking one of the Lunar magnetic Anomalies might be a good choice... one on the Nearside, Reiner Gamma and one on Farside at Mare Marinas..

Why? Because the two anomalies roduce a magnetic field powerful enough to lock solar radiation just like it does here on Earth....

Mini Magnetic Shield Found on the Moon

A  small magnetosphere protects a pocket of the lunar surface from solar wind.

Anne Minard
for National Geographic News
Published April 14, 2010

For the first time, scientists have observed a mini magnetosphere on the moon—a magnetic field "bubble" that protects part of the lunar surface from punishing solar radiation.

This mini magnetosphere lies near the moon's equator, where sunlight reaches only half the time. This would limit the power available to charge solar arrays, should humans ever return to the moon.

But there's evidence other magnetospheres might lie in more favorable landing sites, offering some radiation protection for astronauts.

Magnetic Shield Like a Stone in the Solar Stream

Earth is fully enveloped in its magnetosphere, because our planet's solid iron inner core rotates inside a molten outer core, creating a magnetic dynamo that generates a global magnetic field.

Extending up to 52,000 miles (78,000 kilometers) above the surface, Earth's magnetic field traps and redirects the constant stream of charged particles from the sun, aka the solar wind, which could otherwise fry life as we know it.

Sometimes, when a burst of solar activity overloads Earth's magnetosphere, charged particles seep through and interact with our atmosphere.

"I live far north and can look up and see the [resulting] aurorae," said study co-author Martin Wieser, a senior scientist at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics.

By contrast, the moon doesn't have a global magnetic field, so its surface is constantly being bombarded by the sun's charged particles.

But new data from India's Chandrayaan-1 lunar probe have confirmed that the moon does have a miniature version of a magnetosphere covering a small pocket in the northeastern region of the side of the moon that faces away from Earth.

When Wieser and his team measured it in June, the moon's mini magnetosphere was 224 miles (360 kilometers) across. The magnetosphere acts like a stone in a stream, causing the solar wind to move faster and get thicker in a 186-mile (300-kilometer) ring around the obstacle.

The magnetic field at the center of the bubble is 300 times weaker than the section of Earth's magnetic field over the Equator and 600 times weaker than the field over Earth's Poles.

Magnetic Anomalies Paint Moon's Bright Swirls?

The origins of the mini magnetosphere are puzzling, although some scientists have noted that magnetic fields tend to appear on the opposite side of the moon from large impact craters.

"There is a theory that links the two facts: Plasma [charged gas] created on a large impact would flow around the moon and freeze in the magnetic field when the plasma wave meets on the other side of the moon," Wieser said in an email.

"But there are also magnetic anomalies that do not match this pattern that are more difficult to explain." (Related: "Ancient Moon Had Earthlike Core?")

Previous observations had hinted that mini magnetospheres might exist on the moon, but the Chandrayaan-1 data showed the effect much more clearly. That's because the probe was able to "see" the behavior of particles much closer to the moon's surface.

Similar mini magnetospheres elsewhere on the moon could explain mysterious bright "swirls" on the lunar surface, Wieser said (see picture above).

Solar radiation hitting the lunar soil darkens the surface over time, but magnetospheres might be protecting such regions from this dimming effect.

Asteroid Magnetism a Key Link

The discovery of the moon's first mini magnetosphere opens the door for finding magnetospheres on smaller bodies, even asteroids, Wieser said. (Find out how a mini magnetosphere around Jupiter's moon Ganymede drives the giant planet's hyperauroras.)

Most asteroids would be dwarfed by even a mini magnetosphere, Wieser said, so "they will be completely inside such a magnetospheric bubble. If the field is strong enough, this could alter significantly how the asteroid evolves."

Understanding asteroid evolution can in turn tell us more about the birth of the solar system, he pointed out. Asteroids lack atmospheres and therefore are not subject to most of the erosive processes that alter evidence of geologic histories on other bodies.

"These objects are thus thought to be much closer to how the solar system was in the beginning," he said. Knowing the effects of solar wind on asteroids and how magnetic anomalies might play a role will be an important link in the story.

"Any process modifying the surface over geological times may significantly change our understanding of these objects ... and may therefore change our understanding of the formation and evolution of the solar system," Wieser said.

The moon's mini magnetosphere is described in the March 2010 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100414-moon-magnetosphere-solar-wind/