There are water molecules and ice up on the Moon, so how did they get there? Asteroid and comet collisions are likely to have produced some of it, but a new study suggests another source of lunar water: the Earth’s atmosphere.
The moon lacks the bodies of liquid water that are a hallmark of Earth but scientists said on Monday lunar water is more widespread than previously known, with water molecules trapped within mineral grains on the surface and more water perhaps hidden in ice patches residing in permanent shadows.
NASA will send a golf cart-sized robot to the moon in 2022 to search for deposits of water below the surface, an effort to evaluate the vital resource ahead of a planned human return to the moon in 2024 to possibly use it for astronauts to drink and to make rocket fuel, the U.S. space agency said on Friday.
Researchers from NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, report that streams of meteoroids striking the Moon infuse the thin lunar atmosphere with a short-lived water vapor.
Using data from the LAMP (Lyman Alpha Mapping Project) instrument aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, planetary researchers have observed water molecules moving around the dayside of the Moon.
In the darkest and coldest parts of its polar regions, a team of scientists has directly observed definitive evidence of water ice on the Moon’s surface.
Watery remains of meteorites could be trapped in craters
A new analysis of data from two lunar missions finds evidence that the Moon’s water is widely distributed across the surface and is not confined to a particular region or type of terrain.
We learned more about neutron stars, found more planets and said goodbye to Cassini in 2017. We end the year with a better picture of the Universe than we started it with.
Data from an Indian lunar orbiter hints at substantial water in the lunar interior
