NASA finds more water on Moon surface

The discovery is a major breakthrough in the mission to explore the rest of the solar system, as well as giving a better understanding of the lunar surface.

Water has been definitively found on the Moon, Nasa has said, and there are a set of “water traps” that could hold it stably.

The discovery is a major breakthrough in the mission to explore the rest of the solar system, as well as giving a better understanding of the lunar surface.

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The finding is based on two studies – published in Nature Astonomy – that examined new data from the US space agency NASA.

Source of water

The research was led by Casey Honniball of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Scientists have suggested the source of the water may have been comets, asteroids, solar wind or interplanetary dust. The new research provides evidence the water may be surviving on sunlit lunar surfaces because it is attached to minerals.

The second study centered on so-called “cold traps” on the moon. These are areas of the lunar surface that exist in a state of permanent darkness where temperatures are below about minus 160 degrees Celsius. Scientists say temperatures this cold can hold frozen water for billions of years.

Researchers say they were able to reconstruct the size of the cold traps and where they sit from images and temperature readings from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. They identified cold traps as small as a few meters across and others as wide as 30 kilometers.

How is water beneficial

The discovery of more water on Moon surface could be important for planned, long-term human bases on the moon. It could mean that enough resources exist on the moon itself to provide drinking water and possibly help produce rocket fuel. Until about 10 years ago, scientists believed the moon was mostly dry. Then, a series of findings provided evidence that water ice was widespread in small amounts on parts of the moon.

The ice was thought to be in areas permanently blocked from sunlight. But in one of the new studies, NASA said it was able to confirm the presence of water molecules on sunlit parts of the lunar surface. The space agency says the identification came from data collected by its SOFIA airborne observatory. SOFIA is a Boeing 747SP aircraft equipped with a powerful telescope. Researchers say that if we can use the resources at the Moon, then we can carry less water and more equipment to help enable new scientific discoveries

More research

NASA plans to launch a water-seeking rover named Viper to the moon’s south pole by the end of 2022. Astronauts would follow in a series of missions intended to set up long-term bases. The space agency wants its new Artemis moon-landing program to be sustainable, unlike the Apollo program a half-century ago.

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