NASA
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NASA’s SOFIA Discovers Water on Sunlit Surface of Moon
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16 hours ago
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Water exists on the moon, scientists confirm
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12 hours ago
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NASA Finds Water and Ice on Moon in More Places Than Thought
Artemis artworkimage copyrightNASA image captionArtwork: Nasa
wants to return to the Moon, but this time it wants to stay
Having dropped tantalising hints days ago about an “exciting new
discovery about the Moon”, the US space agency has revealed
conclusive evidence of water on our only natural satellite.
This “unambiguous detection of molecular water” will boost
Nasa’s hopes of establishing a lunar base.
The aim is to sustain that base by tapping into the Moon’s
natural resources.
The findings have been published as two papers in the journal
Nature Astronomy.
Unlike previous detections of water in permanently shadowed
parts of lunar craters, scientists have now detected the molecule
in sunlit regions of the Moon’s surface.
Speaking during a virtual teleconference, co-author Casey
Honniball, postdoctoral fellow at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight
Center in Maryland, said: “The amount of water is roughly
equivalent to a 12-ounce bottle of water in a cubic metre of lunar
soil.”
Her Nasa colleague Jacob Bleacher, from the agency’s human
exploration directorate, said researchers still needed to
understand the nature of the watery deposits. This would help them
determine how accessible they would be for future lunar explorers
to use.
And while there have previously been signs of water on the lunar
surface, these new discoveries suggest it is more abundant than
previously thought. “It gives us more options for potential water
sources on the Moon,” said Hannah Sargeant, a planetary scientist
from the Open University in Milton Keynes, told BBC News. media
captionNasa announcement: What is on the Moon?
“Where to put a Moon base is largely focused on where the water
is.”
The US space agency has said it will send the first woman and
next man to the lunar surface in 2024 to prepare for the “next
giant leap” – human exploration of Mars as early as the 2030s.
Dr Sargeant explained that this meant developing “a more
sustainable way of doing space exploration”.
“Part of that is using these local resources – especially
water,” she told BBC News. How did scientists find this lunar
water?
The first of these new discoveries was made from an
airborne infrared telescope known as Sofia. This observatory, on
board a modified Boeing 747, flies above much of Earth’s
atmosphere, giving a largely unobstructed view of the Solar
System.
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Using this infrared telescope, researchers picked up the
“signature” colour of water molecules.
The researchers think it is stored in bubbles of lunar glass or
between grains on the surface that protect it from the harsh
environment.
In the other study, scientists looked for permanently shadowed
areas – known as cold traps – where water could be captured and
remain permanently. They found these cold traps at both poles and
concluded that “approximately 40,000 kilometres squared of the
lunar surface has the capacity to trap water”. What does this
discovery mean?
Dr Sargeant said this could “broaden the list of places where we
might want to build a base”.
There are quite a few one-off missions to the Moon’s polar
regions coming up in the next few years. But in the longer term,
there are plans to build a permanent habitation on the lunar
surface,
“This could have some influence. It gives us some time to do
some investigation,” said the Open University researcher.
“It doesn’t give us much time because we’re already working on
Moon base ideas and where we’re going to go, but it’s more
promising.
“We were going to go to the Moon anyway. But this gives us more
options and makes it an even more exciting place to go.”
Experts say that water-ice could form the basis of a future
lunar economy, once we’ve figured out how to extract it.
It would be much cheaper to make rocket fuel on the Moon than
send it from Earth. So when future lunar explorers want to return
to Earth, or travel on to other destinations, they could turn the
water into the hydrogen and oxygen commonly used to power space
vehicles.
Re-fuelling at the Moon could therefore bring down the cost of
space travel and make a lunar base more affordable.