Direct from the Moon

September 3, 2009

 

Besides the History Channel episode, “The Day the Moon Was Gone,” which I wrote about in my last post, another TV show about the moon aired recently on the National Geographic Channel. It’s called “Direct from the Moon,” and it was broadcast on August 23. Unfortunately, the National Geographic website is remarkably uninformative about future showings, so I can’t tell you when your next chance to see it will be.

The show is mostly about the Japanese Kaguya mission, which ended on June 10, about a week before NASA’s LRO and LCROSS missions lifted off. I was very glad to see an hour-long special about Kaguya, which I think did not receive nearly enough publicity here in the U.S. It’s easy to understand why. First, the mission was Japanese, and so the whole national-pride factor is missing (for American publications and readers). Second, the Japanese are very modest. And third, the Japanese speak Japanese, which means that it’s not always so easy for English speakers to understand what they have done.

Planetary scientists, however, certainly did appreciate how special the Kaguya mission was. When I went to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston in 2008, the Kaguya team had set up a giant high-definition TV in the lobby that played a continuous loop of images from the HDTV camera on the Kaguya spacecraft. For most of the scientists at the meeting this was their first chance to see the Kaguya images, and they were absolutely blown away. It was like flying over the moon in the Apollo command module, only better because you had a wider field of view. One planetary scientist told me that he could teach an entire course of geology (or selenology) just based on the images that Kaguya was acquiring.

However, for a long time only a few bits and pieces of the HDTV videos were available to the general public — an earthrise here, an earthset there. (The Kaguya team evidently learned a lesson from the Apollo program: Earthlings really like to see pictures of Earth from the moon.) So I was really looking forward to an hour-long special that includes some of the best video from Kaguya.

The imagery of Tycho crater is probably the most spectacular sequence in “Direct from the Moon.” The HDTV camera team has now compiled the 3-dimensional data in such a way that you can swoop down through the crater and turn this way and that, as if you were in an airplane. This greatly improves the 3-dimensional effect of the images. Now, as you head over the rim of Tycho, you can see that it is in fact a huge cliff face. (According to the voice-over it is higher than the cliffs at the Grand Canyon). You gain a new respect for the immensity of this crater (which is only medium-sized by lunar standards) and the enormous impact that produced it.

It’s interesting that Tycho is comparable in age and size to the impact structure underneath the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico (the Chicxulub crater) that is believed to be where the dinosaur-killing asteroid hit Earth. Here are their vital statistics:

AGE: Chicxulub — 65 million years, Tycho — 108 million years

WIDTH: Chicxulub — 112 miles, Tycho — 52 miles

VISIBILITY: Chicxulub — buried under nearly a kilometer of sediment, Tycho — brightest crater on the moon, easily visible with the naked eye, with rays that extend almost a quarter of the way around the moon.

MEGAFAUNA KILLED BY IMPACT: Chicxulub — Dinosaurs and 70 percent of other species (though some paleontologists disagree), Tycho — None (Our lunar space defense shield worked!)

But I digress. Back to “Direct from the Moon.” Besides the stunning camera footage, the other thing I really enjoyed about this program was the chance to find out about some of Kaguya’s science results. I heard about three things that were new to me:

• On the far side of the moon, Kaguya mapped out regions of lower density, the reverse of the near side where there are several “mascons” or regions of higher mass density.
• Kaguya identified 40 places on the moon where we might find orange soil, similar to the orange soil that was found by Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt. This soil has recently been shown to contain trace amounts of water.
• By comparing crater sizes to asteroid sizes, Kaguya confirmed that the most likely source for the Late Heavy Bombardment, which produced most of the moon’s craters and large basins, was the asteroid belt (not comets).

There were several other things I liked about the program. It included some interviews with Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Harrison Schmitt. Aldrin is everywhere these days — he is the one astronaut who has most thoroughly embraced his role as an advocate for space travel. But this was the first time I had seen an interview of Schmitt, the only geologist to go to the moon. I also liked the great CGI animations of the giant impact and the accretion of the moon from the impact debris. I also liked the animation explaining why the near side of the moon has a disproportionate amount of denser material, while the far side has more than its share of lighter material.

A disappointment in the program was that the Japanese scientists got very little screen time and generally came off as rather bland and emotionless. However, there was one exception, a guy named Noriyuki Namiki of Kyushu University. When he was talking about the discovery of the lighter regions on the far side, he said something that sounded very much like the favorite expression of Hiro (on the TV show “Heroes”): “Yata!” (“All right!”) Since I know only about ten words of Japanese, it was cool to hear something that I understood right away!

In general, I was struck by the difference in tone between the National Geographic program and the History Channel series I have appeared on twice, “The Universe.” It showed me that popular science on TV doesn’t have to be sensationalized and enhanced by dizzying and eye-straining graphics. The National Geographic producers were willing to let the science and the scientists tell the story. I think that the History Channel must be aiming at a younger, hipper audience that might be turned off by a traditional documentary. But on the National Geographic Channel, at least, the art of the traditional documentary is alive and well.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 12:39 pm and is filed under Media, Missions, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.