NASA finds 'significant' water on moon

[dan9999]

NASA finds 'significant' water on moon
NASA calls discovery of water on the moon "a new chapter."
November 13, 2009 1:29 p.m. EST
CNN

NASA said Friday it had discovered water on the moon, opening "a new chapter" that could allow for the development of a lunar space station.

The discovery was announced by project scientist Anthony Colaprete at a midday news conference. "Indeed, yes, we found water," he said.

The find is based on preliminary data collected when the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, intentionally crashed October 9 into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus crater near the moon's south pole.

After the satellite struck, a rocket flew through the debris cloud, measuring the amount of water and providing a host of other data, Colaprete said.

The project team concentrated on data from the satellite's spectrometers, which provide the best information about the presence of water, Colaprete said. A spectrometer helps identify the composition of materials by examining light they emit or absorb.

Although the goal of the $79 million mission was to determine whether there is water on the moon, discoveries in other areas are expected as studies progress, Colaprete and other scientists said at the briefing at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field near San Francisco, California.

"The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon," the space agency said in a written statement shortly after the briefing began.

Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, said the latest discovery also could unlock the mysteries of the solar system.

He listed several options as sources for the water, including solar winds, comets, giant molecular clouds or even the moon itself through some kind of internal activity. The Earth also may have a role, Wargo said.

"If the water that was formed or deposited is billions of years old, these polar cold traps could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data," NASA said in its statement.

"In addition, water and other compounds represent potential resources that could sustain future lunar exploration."

[dan9999]

NASA Moon Crash Found 'Significant Amount' of Water
Friday, November 13, 2009
By Andrea Thompson
Space.com

It's official: There's water on the moon.

NASA's LCROSS probe discovered beds of water ice at the lunar south pole when it impacted the moon last month, mission scientists announced today.

"Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit, we found a significant amount," Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator from NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

The LCROSS probe impacted the lunar south pole at a crater called Cabeus on Oct. 9. The $79 million spacecraft, preceded by its Centaur rocket stage, hit the lunar surface in an effort to create a debris plume that could be analyzed by scientists for signs of water ice.

Scientists have suspected that permanently shadowed craters at the south pole of the moon could be cold enough to sustain water frozen at the surface. Water has already been detected on the moon by a NASA-built instrument on board India's now defunct Chandrayaan-1 probe and other spacecraft, though it was in very small amounts and bound to the dirt and dust of the lunar surface.

NASA plans to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 for extended missions on the lunar surface. Finding usable amounts of ice on the moon would be a boon for that effort since it could be a vital local resource to support a lunar base.

The impact was observed by LCROSS's sister spacecraft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as other space and ground-based telescopes.

The debris plume from the impacts was not seen right away and was only revealed a week after the impact, when mission scientist had had time to comb through the probe's data.

NASA launched LCROSS — short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite — and LRO in June.