Radar evidence suggests that ice has formed in the craters on the north pole.
Credit: Wikimedia
WASHINGTON: A radar aboard an Indian spacecraft has detected craters filled with ice on the Moon's north pole, NASA scientists said.
The U.S. space agency's Mini-SAR radar found more than 40 small craters ranging in size from 1.6 to 15 km, each full of water ice.
"Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater, it's estimated there could be at least 600 million metric tons of water ice," NASA said in a statement.
Mapping permanently shadowed polar craters
The finding came weeks after President Barack Obama put on ice US ambitions to return astronauts to the moon.
The lightweight, synthetic aperture radar's findings "show the Moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought," said Paul Spudis, lead investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.
The Mini-SAR has spent the last year mapping the Moon's permanently shadowed polar craters that are not visible from Earth, using the polarisation properties of reflected radio waves.
Water found in many forms
"After analysing the data, our science team determined a strong indication of water ice, a finding which will give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit," said Jason Crusan of NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington.
The radar's findings, to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, are consistent with findings of other NASA instruments and add to the growing scientific understanding of the multiple forms of water found on the Moon.
NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, which was also on board Chandrayaan-1, has discovered water molecules in the moon's polar regions, while water vapour was detected by NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS.
Indian scientists reported last year in papers published in the journal Science that they had analysed light waves detected by the Indian satellite and two American probes, and determined that they showed there was water on the surface of the Moon.
Until then, scientists had advanced the theory that except for the possibility of ice at the bottom of craters, the Moon was totally dry.
Too little too late NASA...LOL
NASA picks now to release such findings...they had these findings for decades already, but they pretend to announce it as a new finding this year. This is a pathetic attempt to get Pres. Obama to switch on the moon missions.
NASA if you want to persuade the president, then it will take a release of the truth...that alien life exists upon the moon and has for billions of years.
Scott C. Waring
Author of Dragons of Asgard & UFO Sightings of 2006-2009
Re: Too little too late NASA...LOL
What the ....!?
I hate people who waste
I hate people who waste bandwidth and disk space
How about that National
How about that National Enquirer? Sitting on The Real Truth about green cheese all these years!
Now Why Would That Be?
I blame Global Warming!
Excellent discovery
Excellent discovery. Data-reduction can take months to years and data is still being analysed from missions +20 years ago (IRAS for example, from 1983), so no surprise about the delay in announcing these new findings. Just adds to the 'moister Moon' previous results implied. Wonder if there's not even more ice at the South Pole of the Moon, and if not, why not?
Adam