NASA found water on moon

[HasanG20]

WASHINGTON: A 'significant amount' of frozen water has been found on the moon, the US space agency said Friday heralding a major leap forward in space exploration and boosting hopes of a permanent lunar base.

Preliminary data from a moon probe 'indicates the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently shadowed lunar crater,' NASA said in a statement.

'The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon,' it added, as ecstatic scientists celebrated the landmark discovery.

The data was found after NASA sent two spacecraft crashing into the lunar service last month in a dramatic experiment to probe Earth's nearest neighbor for water.

One rocket slammed into the Cabeus crater, near the lunar southern pole, at around 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) per hour.

The impact sent a huge plume of material billowing up from the bottom of the crater, which has not seen sunlight for billions of years.

The rocket was followed four minutes later by a spacecraft equipped with cameras to record the impact.

'We are ecstatic,' said Anthony Colaprete, project scientist and principal investigator for the 79-million-dollar LCROSS mission.

“Multiple lines of evidence show water was present in both the high angle vapor plume and the ejecta curtain created by the LCROSS Centaur impact.

'The concentration and distribution of water and other substances requires further analysis, but it is safe to say Cabeus holds water,' Colaprete said.

Scientists had previously theorized that, except for the possibility of ice at the bottom of craters, the moon was totally dry.

Finding water on Earth's natural satellite is a major breakthrough in space exploration.

'We're unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbor and, by extension, the solar system,' said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington.

'The full understanding of the LCROSS data may take some time. The data is that rich,' Colaprete cautioned.

'Along with the water in Cabeus, there are hints of other intriguing substances. The permanently shadowed regions of the moon are truly cold traps, collecting and preserving material over billions of years.'

Only 12 men, all Americans, have ever walked on the moon, and the last to set foot there were in 1972, at the end of the Apollo missions.

But NASA's ambitious plans to put US astronauts back on the moon by 2020 to establish manned lunar bases for further exploration to Mars under the Constellation project are increasingly in doubt.

NASA's budget is currently too small to pay for Constellation's Orion capsule, a more advanced and spacious version of the Apollo lunar module, as well as the Ares I and Ares V launchers needed to put the craft in orbit.

A key review panel appointed by President Barack Obama said existing budgets are not large enough to fund a return mission before 2020. -AFP

[Lady Macbeth]

Nasa's experiment last month to find water on the Moon was a major success, US scientists have announced.
A camera on the probe shows the ejecta plume about 20 seconds after impact


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.
One researcher described this as the equivalent of "a dozen two-gallon buckets" of water.
"We didn't just find a little bit; we found a significant amount," said Anthony Colaprete, chief scientist for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission.
No doubt
October's experiment involved driving a 2,200kg Centaur rocket stage into the 100km-wide Cabeus Crater, a permanently shadowed depression at the Moon's far south.
At the time, scientists were hoping for a big plume of debris some 10km high which could be seen by Earth telescopes.
The actual debris cloud was much smaller, about 1.6km high, but sufficiently large to betray the evidence researchers were seeking.
The near-infrared spectrometer on the LCROSS probe that followed the rocket into the crater detected water-ice and water vapour. The ultraviolet-visible spectrometer provided additional confirmation by identifying the hydroxyl (OH) molecule, which arises when water is broken apart in sunlight.
"We were able to match the spectra from LCROSS data only when we inserted the spectra for water," Dr Colaprete said.
"No other reasonable combination of other compounds that we tried matched the observations. The possibility of contamination from the Centaur also was ruled out."
Useful resource
The total quantity of H2O spied by the instruments was more than 100kg. It came out of a 20m-30m wide hole dug up by the impacting Centaur rocket.
The LCROSS scientists stressed that the results presented on Friday were preliminary findings only, and further analysis could raise the final assessment of the amount of water in Cabeus.
Peter Schultz, from Brown University and a co-investigator on the LCROSS mission, said: "What's really exciting is we've only hit one spot. It's kind of like when you're drilling for oil. Once you find it in one place, there's a greater chance you'll find more nearby."
The regular surface of the Moon as seen from Earth is drier than any desert on our planet. But researchers have long speculated that some permanently shadowed places might harbour considerable stores of water, perhaps delivered by impacting comets billions of years ago.
If future investigations find the quantities to be particularly large, this water could become a useful resource for any astronauts who might base themselves at the lunar poles.
"It can be used for drinking water," said Mike Wargo, Nasa's chief lunar scientist for exploration systems.
"You can break it down and have breathable air for crews. But also, if you have significant quantities of this stuff, you have the constituents of one of the most potent rocket fuels - oxygen and hydrogen."



In September, data from three spacecraft, including India's Chandrayaan probe, showed that very fine films of H2O coat the particles that make up lunar soil.
Scientists behind that finding speculated that this water might migrate to the even cooler poles, much as water vapour on Earth will condense on a cold surface.
This cold sink effect could be supplementing any water delivered by comets, they said.
If cometary material did reside in places like Cabeus Crater it would be fascinating to examine it, commented Greg Delory, from the University of California, Berkeley.
"The surfaces in these permanently shadowed areas, such as the one LCROSS impacted, are very cold," he told reporters.
"That means that they tend to trap and keep things that encounter them - compounds, atoms and so forth. And so they act as record keepers over periods as long as several billion years. They have a story to tell about the history of the Moon and the Solar System."
LCROSS was launched by Nasa on 18 June as part of a double mission which included the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
The latter, which continues to circle the Moon, measured a temperature of minus 230 Celsius at the base of Cabeus Crater.