Various: New data and images from flybys of the Moon by the Cassini, the US Deep Impact spacecraft, and a NASA instrument on India's Chandrayaan-1 orbiter provide compelling evidence of traces of water on the Moon. The results were published in Science magazine.
Tentative clues for the existence of water ice on the Moon have existed for sometime. Faith Vilas, director of the Multiple Mirror Telescope in Arizona saw phyllosilicates—minerals formed through heat and water—back in 1999 when the Galileo spacecraft flew by the Moon, but until recently could not get her research accepted for publication.
Both the Clementine and Lunar Prospector spacecrafts saw some hints of hydrogen molecules some years ago. But it was new data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, (LRO) which was discussed at a conference last week that gave hints that conditions would be ripe for water ice.
The LRO's Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment, which measured the temperature of the lunar surface, discovered that some of the polar craters contain some of the lowest temperatures in the solar system, even colder than the surface of Pluto. These measurement were proof that the Moon has permanently dark and extremely cold places said science team member Ashwin Vasavada from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California at the conference.
Data from the LRO's Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector didn't show many neutrons inside the craters but surprisingly showed evidence of ice outside of the craters says University of Arizona astronomer William Boynton. "It actually could be better (for exploration) because getting down inside those craters is very difficult," he adds.
According to the results published in Science, concentrations in sunlit soil might average about one liter per ton of lunar material. That water doesn’t remain on the Moon, but comes and goes each lunar day.
In contrast, water molecules bound to phosphate minerals within volcanic rocks—material that formed well beneath the lunar surface—date back several billion years, says Francis McCubbin of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC A fourth, unpublished study led by McCubbin finds a surprisingly high abundance of this interior water, which may shed new light on how the Moon formed.
"It’s so startling because it’s so pervasive," said Lawrence A. Taylor of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, a co-author of one of the papers that analyzed data from a NASA instrument aboard India’s Chandrayyaan-1 satellite. "It’s like somebody painted the globe," he told the New York Times.
Carle Pieters, of Brown University, who led the Chandrayaan-1 observation team, said: "When we say ‘water on the moon’, we are not talking about lakes, oceans or even puddles. Water on the moon means molecules of water and hydroxyl that interact with molecules of rock and dust specifically in the top millimeters of the moon’s surface," she told the London Times.
The discovery of more evidence for water on the Moon is spurring excitement over its implications for future space exploration says space.com's Leonard David.
"If ice is found we have to further explore it with landers, rovers, coring drills to assess its distribution and composition," explained Bernard Foing, the European Space Agency (ESA) project scientist for the now defunct ESA SMART-1 lunar orbiter. He is also the director of the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG).Following that appraisal, Foing said that the next task is to organize how ice could be partly exploited on the spot in some areas to ease the next steps of human exploration towards an international lunar base.
NASA help hold a press conference to announce the findings at 2:00pm EST earlier today.
Related Links
Water on the Moon? Nature
Possible surface ice on moon surprises Arizona Star
Water sheathes, permeates Moon ScienceNews
Prospect of Water Ice Spurs Excitement for Moon Exploration Space.com
It's Official: Water Found on the Moon Space.com
India's first space mission finds water on Moon The Guardian
Evidence suggests water exists on the Moon LA Times
With NASA's announcement that water has been found on the moon, the prospects for lunar habitats, settlements, laboratories, factories, mining operations and the like just got better.
Within the upper layers of the Lunar soil, water has been discovered. This means that the water can be collected and used for drinking, bathing, food preparation, green-house based agriculture, and other industrial processes.
Since water molecules are composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, the water can be disassociated into its atomic components and used for rocket fuel. Liquid oxygen and diatomic hydrogen based rocket fuel has among the highest specific impulse of any known chemical rocket fuels. The point is that fuel for space craft can be manufactured on the moon, in theory, whereupon these space craft, perhaps in orbit around the Moon can be refueled and sent on missions into the far reaches of our planetary solar system. Thus the moon and any future infrastructure contained thereon can facilitate manned excursions to Mars and ultimately, the development of lunar habitats, settlements, laboratories, factories, and mining operations.
Manned mission to the asteroid belt can also be staged from the Moon, with the prospects of mining these bodies for the heavy and in some cases, rare and precious metals they may contain.
Afterward, we could travel to some of the various moons of the Gas Giant Planets, such as some of the Moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus, or in cases where the radiation hazards would be minimal.
We could then explore the minor planets, and eventually any Earth mass range Oort Cloud objects.