It's Official: Water Found on the Moon

[mickw]

Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon.

The new findings, detailed in the Sept. 25 issue of the journal Science, come in the wake of further evidence of lunar polar water ice by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and just weeks before the planned lunar impact of NASA's LCROSS satellite, which will hit one of the permanently shadowed craters at the moon's south pole in hope of churning up evidence of water ice deposits in the debris field.

More:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090923-moon-water-discovery.html

[Mike]

A surprising amount of water has been found to exist in the Moon's soil.

Data from three spacecraft, including India's Chandrayaan probe, shows that very fine films of H20 coat the particles that make up the lunar dirt.

The quantity is tiny but could become a useful resource for astronauts wishing to live on the Moon, scientists say.

"If you had a cubic metre of lunar soil, you could squeeze it and get out a litre of water," explained US researcher Larry Taylor.

The rock and soil samples returned by the Apollo missions were found to be ever so slightly damp when examined in the laboratory, but scientists could never rule out the possibility that the moisture got into the samples on Earth.

Now a remote sensing instrument on Chandrayaan-1, India's first mission to lunar orbit, has confirmed that the signal was real.

Two other spacecraft to look at the Moon - Nasa's Deep Impact probe and the US-European Cassini satellite - back up Chandrayaan.

Both collected their Moon data long before Chandrayaan was launched (in the case of Cassini, 10 years ago), but the significance of what they saw is only now being realised.

More............ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8272144.stm

[Rick]

Analysis of the lunar surface by three different spacecraft has provided "unambiguous evidence" of water on the Moon, Space.com reports.

India's Chandrayaan-1, NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and the agency's Deep Impact probe have all detected the presence of either water or hydroxyl - one hydrogen atom and one oxygen atom linked by a single bond.

The NASA-built Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) aboard Chandrayaan-1 "detected wavelengths of light reflected off the surface that indicated the chemical bond between hydrogen and oxygen".

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/24/lunar_water/

[mickw]

NASA has long planned to mine water on the moon to supply human colonies and future space exploration. Now the discovery of small amounts of water across much of the lunar surface has shifted that vision into fast-forward, with the U.S. space agency pursuing several promising technologies.

A hydrogen reduction plant and lunar rover prospectors have already passed field tests on Hawaii's volcanic soil, and more radical microwave technology has shown that it may be used to extract underground water ice. Water mined by these methods could not only keep astronauts supplied with a drink, but may also provide oxygen and fuel for lunar missions.

More:   http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/090930-tw-tapping-moon-water.html

[mickw]

Many experts were shocked by the recent discovery of water on the moon, which was long thought to be bone-dry.

But not everyone was surprised.

Astrophysicist Arlin Crotts of Columbia University has been working for years on research that he says predicted this finding. In a paper he submitted recently to the Astrophysical Journal with his graduate student Cameron Hummels, Crotts hypothesizes the existence of widespread water on the lunar surface, and offers an idea for how it got there.

"I am predicting something that just happened, that nobody else was predicting," Crotts said. "I hope people recognize that this is a true prediction of the spatial distribution of water around the moon."

Until recently, many scientists thought the lunar surface was almost completely dry, and that shadowed craters near the poles offered the only chance for small stores of water. But new data from the NASA-built Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) on India's Chandrayaan-1 satellite, NASA's Cassini spacecraft and NASA's Deep Impact probe uncovered tantalizing evidence of water molecules all over the moon's surface. These findings were detailed in three papers in the Sept. 25 issue of the journal Science.

Some more details, especially about the possible water at the poles, are likely to come when NASA's LCROSS impactor slams into a crater on the moon's south pole Friday morning in search of signs of water.

Where did it come from?

More:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/091006-st-moon-water-origins.html

[Rick]

NASA's LCROSS probe has confirmed the presence of water on the lunar surface, including buckets of the stuff in a shadowed crater near the moon's south pole.

"Indeed, yes, we found water," said LCROSS principal investigator Anthony Colaprete said during a news conference today at NASA's Ames Research Center. "And we didn't find just a little bit, we found a significant amount."

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/13/lcross_preliminary_results/

[Rick]

Nasa's experiment last month to find water on the Moon was a major success, US scientists have announced.

The space agency smashed a rocket and a probe into a large crater at the lunar south pole, hoping to kick up ice.

Scientists who have studied the data now say instruments trained on the impact plume saw copious quantities of water-ice and water vapour.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8359744.stm

[mickw]

Vast pockets of water ice numbering in the millions of tons have been discovered at the north pole of the moon, opening up another region of the lunar surface for potential exploration by astronauts and unmanned probes, NASA announced Monday.

A NASA radar instrument on an Indian moon probe found evidence of at least 600 million metric tons of water ice spread out on the bottom of craters at the lunar north pole. It is yet another supply of lunar water ice, a vital resource that could be mined to produce oxygen or rocket fuel to support a future moon base, NASA officials said.

More:   Lunar Water

[mickw]

The moon's interior may harbor 100 times more water than previous estimates, according to a new study that took a fresh look at samples of moon rocks collected by Apollo astronauts nearly 40 years ago.

The researchers determined that the lunar water likely originated early in the moon's formation history, suggesting that it is, in fact, native to the moon.

Scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, and other colleagues, said it's likely that the water was preserved from the hot magma that was present when the moon began to form – some 4.5 billion years ago

More:   Water

[Rick]

Doubt cast on evidence for wet Moon

Scientists have cast doubt on a major part of the case for the Moon having once held abundant water.

A US team studied a mineral called apatite, which is found in a variety of lunar rock types.

Apatite, the name for which comes from a Greek word meaning deceit, may have misled scientists into thinking the Moon is wetter than it actually is.

Lead author Jeremy Boyce said: "We thought we had a great indicator, but it turns out it's not that reliable."

More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26696856