Saturday, November 14, 2009

Water on the Moon.

Remember NASA dropping spacecraft on the moon with the intent of analysing the dust plume created? It was all very disappointing for those accustomed to Hollywood CGI mega-bangs and received a fair bit of ridicule in the papers. Well, it was an experiment whose importance and results is immediately apparent to anyone like me, and readers here.

A small NASA spacecraft and its companion rocket did indeed strike water when they slammed into a permanently shadowed crater at the moon’s south pole, NASA announced November 13.

Water available on the moon means the possibility of a base like the one depicted in that old series Space 1999. And we're not talking about a bit of damp here:

But analyses since then reveal that the impact kicked up at least 100 kilograms of water vapor and ice, or 25 gallons. LCROSS project scientist Anthony Colaprete of the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., reported the finding during a briefing at Ames.

Go read the whole article at Science News.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

[My 2 cents] Maybe there is nothing new on the moon but what we have brought there... What if all that was the effect of what we have been sending for years in space. (Particles of oxygen and so on)

Jebel Krong said...

tijuan - that's unlikely as they are in different places, and we haven't been to the moon nearly enough to ruin it. yet.

the presence of water (in probably limited amounts) was expected so it's nice to see some confirmation, i can certainly see a moonbase being a target for at least one nation in the future, whether that is the US or Europe though is definitely in question...

perhaps when they get there they can test for H3 as well? that would definitely pay for itself.

vaudeviewgalor raandisisraisins said...

lets put some nuke power grids up there and let gerry anderson steer us to the next level.