Water on Moon



The moon's surface has more water than previously thought  Source: AFP



Scientists have discovered significant amounts of water on the moon - a finding that may bolster the case for a manned base on the lunar surface.

In an audacious experiment last year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration slammed a spent-fuel rocket into a lunar crater at 9,000 km/h, and then used a pair of orbiting satellites to analyse the debris thrown off by the impact.

They discovered that the crater contained water in the form of ice, plus a host of other resources, including hydrogen, ammonia, methane, mercury, sodium and silver.

NASA announced its groundbreaking discovery of lunar water last October. Now, a more detailed analysis of the data - the subject of six research papers being published today in the journal Science - concludes that there is a lot more water on the moon than anyone expected.

“It's really wet,” said Anthony Colaprete, co-author of one of the Science papers and a space scientist at NASA Ames Research Centre at Moffett Field, California. He and his colleagues estimate that 5.6 per cent of the total mass of the targeted lunar crater's soil consists of water ice.

In other words, 1000kg of moon dirt would yield 45 litres of water.

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