DISCOVERED: WATER ON THE MOON
 

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SOURCE
Splash! NASA moon crash struck lots of water


By ALICIA CHANG (AP) – 1 hour ago

LOS ANGELES — Suddenly, the moon looks exciting again. It has lots of water, scientists said Friday — a thrilling discovery that sent a ripple of hope for a future astronaut outpost in a place that has always seemed barren and inhospitable.

Experts have long suspected there was water on the moon. Confirmation came from data churned up by two NASA spacecraft that intentionally slammed into a lunar crater last month.

"Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit. We found a significant amount," said Anthony Colaprete, lead scientist for the mission, holding up a white water bucket for emphasis.

The lunar crash kicked up at least 25 gallons and that's only what scientists could see from the plumes of the impact, Colaprete said.

Some space policy experts say that makes the moon attractive for exploration again. Having an abundance of water would make it easier to set up a base camp for astronauts, supplying drinking water and a key ingredient for rocket fuel.

"Having definitive evidence that there is substantial water is a significant step forward in making the moon an interesting place to go," said George Washington University space policy scholar John Logsdon.

Even so, members of the blue-ribbon panel reviewing NASA's future plans said it doesn't change their conclusion that the program needs more money to get beyond near-Earth orbit. The panel wants NASA to look at other potential destinations like asteroids and Mars.

"This new and terrific result reassures us about lunar resources, but ... the challenges currently facing the human spaceflight program remain," Chris Chyba, a Princeton astrophysicist who is on the panel, said in an e-mail.

President George W. Bush had proposed a more than $100 billion plan to return astronauts to the moon, then go on to Mars; a test flight of an early version of a new rocket was a success last month. President Barack Obama appointed the special panel to look at the entire moon exploration program. The decision is now up to the White House, and NASA's lunar plans are somewhat on hold until then.

As for unmanned exploration, previous missions had detected the presence of hydrogen in lunar craters near the moon's poles, possible evidence of ice. In September, scientists reported finding tiny amounts of water in the lunar soil all over the moon's surface.

But it was NASA's Oct. 9 mission involving the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, LCROSS, that provided the stunning confirmation announced Friday — water, in the forms of ice and vapor.

"Rather than a dead and unchanging world, it could in fact be a very dynamic and interesting one," said Greg Delory of the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the mission, led by NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

The LCROSS spacecraft only hit one spot on the moon and it's unclear how much water there is across the entire moon.

The October mission involved two strikes into a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole. First, an empty rocket hull slammed into the Cabeus crater. Then, a trailing spacecraft recorded the drama live before it also crashed into the same spot four minutes later.

Though scientists were overjoyed with the plethora of data beamed back to Earth, the mission was a public relations dud. Space enthusiasts who stayed up all night to watch the spectacle did not see the promised giant plume of debris.

NASA scientists had predicted the twin impacts would spew six miles of dust into the sunlight. Instead, images revealed only a mile-high plume, and it was not visible to many amateur astronomers peering through telescopes.

Scientists spent a month analyzing data from the spacecraft's spectrometers, instruments that can detect strong signals of water molecules in the plume.

"We've had hints that there is water. This was almost like tasting it," said Peter Schultz, professor of geological sciences at Brown University and a co-investigator on the LCROSS mission.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who in 1969 made his historic Apollo 11 moonwalk with Neil Armstrong, was pleased to hear the latest discovery, but still believes the U.S. should focus on colonizing Mars.

"People will overreact to this news and say, `Let's have a water rush to the moon,'" Aldrin said. "It doesn't justify that."

Mission scientists said it would take more time to tease out what else was kicked up in the moon dust.

AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Well isn't that something, edit. I should find a way to buy some acres of the moon. For my future generations...

Just saw this on Gizmodo, sounds awesome!

cant wait till we can live on the moon.

Screw the moon. Space stations are much better

Holy shit....I was not expecting this.

ooo shit after all these years we finally found out

let's have a water rush to the moon!

Nasa only says this to get more hype and funding from the government......that same moon water has been there and will be there for eons from now.....

there is really no need for any of us to shoot up there and start building moon station's.....our technology is way too limitied to have any actual usefull effect on anyone at the moment.

Captain Picard, did you discover this? Captain Kirk will be jealous.

Space stations suck unless you are next to a stable wormhole :haha:

My ship outruns his anyday - so of course :D

I swear this was already discovered a little while ago by the Chinese or some other country... :confused:

nope, too busy counterfeiting condoms, sorry.

It was India

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009...loration-india

Now let's just wait for someone to bottle that shit, and we can all pay out the ass for a bottle of moonwater!!

this is one small step for man and a giant leap for mankind

:haha::haha::haha::haha::haha:
They need to boost their population so they can send a crapton of "unwanted" babies to the moon as colonists... duurrrrrrr

You serious? Umm we actually need gravity, so the moon is be better in this case.

Muscle atrophy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weightl...weightlessness

Anyone looking for a good real estate agent???
http://www.lunarlandowner.com/



:haha::haha::haha::haha::haha::haha:

why would it cost tons of money to "return" to the moon? when they did it with a garbage can and tech from the 60s?

shouldnt it be super cheap n easy now ;)



I was thinking that this water was just Atmospheric Escape from Earth that the moon was able to pull in... but if theres a significant amount.... hmm


Also if anyone remembers the movie Time Machine:
http://www.infoniac.com/uimg/moon_crash.jpg

i want some moon water lol

if there is water on the moon, doesn't that mean there is oxygen?

[QUOTE=StylinRed;6682876]why would it cost tons of money to "return" to the moon? when they did it with a garbage can and tech from the 60s?QUOTE]

NASA never put a man on the moon,it was all bullshit.

Star Trek joke. I wasn't serious

nah, its just a quick buck so they can buy more LV and retardedly expensive dogs. :haha:

Wait, first the moon was made of cheese then it has water? Am I getting a pattern? Soon they'll find wheat and will start making Macaroni and Cheese.