Moon may hold water for astronauts
Updated on 18 December 2008
The darkest reaches of the moon could be holding the means to a manned space base there, scientists have said.
Lunar ice could be hidden in the moon's polar craters, untouched by the sun's rays. The findings mean the moon could provide a source of water for astronauts using the moon as a base for further exploration of our solar system.
A team of scientists, led by Doctor Vincent Eke of the Institute of Computational Cosmology at Durham University analysed data from a space probe sent to the moon by NASA in 1998.
They found high concentrations of hydrogen on polar craters, where temperatures are colder than minus 170 degrees Celsius. The hydrogen could have combined with oxygen present in moon rock to make water.
Dr Eke said if the hydrogen was present as lunar ice there could 200,000 million litres of water in the top metre of the moon. He said there could be as much as ten grams of ice for every kilogram of moon rock, enough to fill Northumberland's Kielder Water, the largest manmade reservoir in Northern Europe.
Dr Eke said the moon had the potential to keep water ice in a stable condition for "billions of years", provided that it is untouched by sunlight. "If the hydrogen is present as water ice then our results imply that the top metre of the moon holds about enough water to fill up Kielder Water," he said.
But the scientist warned that there could be no water ice on the moon at all. Instead, hydrogen could take the form of protons being fired from the sun into the dusty lunar surface.
The findings were conducted by a research team from Glasgow University and the Planetary Systems Branch, Space Science and Astrobiology Division, of NASA Ames Research Centre in California, USA.
The data has been collected into a map of hydrogen rich places on the moon's surface, and will be used to assist National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) missions, by allowing astrophysicists to target specific areas in the search for lunar ice.
Doctor Richard Elphic, a researcher in the Planetary Systems Branch, of the NASA Ames Research Centre said: "These results will help NASA's soon-to-be launched Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) missions. LCROSS aims to liberate water by impacting into permanently shadowed polar terrain where ice may exist, and our improved maps of hydrogen abundance can help LCROSS select a promising impact site."
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