Using data collected over two decades ago, scientists from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, have compiled the first complete map of hydrogen abundances on the Moon's surface. The map identifies two types of lunar materials containing enhanced hydrogen and corroborates previous ideas about lunar hydrogen and water, including findings that water likely played a role in the Moon's original magma-ocean formation and solidification.

APL's David Lawrence, Patrick Peplowski and Jack Wilson, along with Rick Elphic from NASA Ames Research Center, used orbital neutron data from the Lunar Prospector mission to build their map. The probe, which was deployed by NASA in 1998, orbited the Moon for a year and a half and sent back the first direct evidence of enhanced hydrogen at the lunar poles, before impacting the lunar surface.

If you've ever made an origami paper crane, using folds and creases to transform a square piece of craft paper into the delicate long-necked bird, it may seem odd that those same folding techniques are being used to develop structures used in one of the most advanced areas of modern technology: space missions.

Yet aerospace engineers have turned to the millenary art of origami to solve a serious conundrum: How do you fit massive structures, like shields that can block starlight and sails that can help propel spacecraft, into the significantly smaller rockets that carry these structures into space? While the sizes of each of these structures vary, picture yourself trying to fit a beach umbrella with a 28-meter diameter (about the length of a basketball court) into a minivan.