Water Ice Hides In Moon’s Dark Craters

NPR
November 13, 2009
by Nell Greenfieldboyce

NASA has new evidence that dark craters on the moon contain hidden stores of water in the form of ice.

“Indeed, yes, we found water,” said Anthony Colaprete, project scientist for NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, known as LCROSS. “And we didn’t find just a little bit; we found a significant amount.”  In October, the LCROSS mission sent an empty rocket hull crashing into a dark, cold crater near the moon’s south pole. The idea was to kick up the lunar dust to see what might be hiding at the bottom of the moon’s permanently shadowed craters, places that haven’t seen sunlight for billions of years.

The impact created a hole about 60 to 100 feet wide, and sent dust and debris soaring up. The plume was analyzed by instruments on an observing spacecraft. That spacecraft sent the data back to Earth, and Colaprete says scientists have been studying it around the clock.  At a press conference, Colaprete holding up a white plastic bucket, said, in all the debris blasted out of the moon, they found enough water to be the equivalent of “maybe about a dozen of these two-gallon buckets.”   more …