NASA announced it has discovered water on the sunlit surface of the moon.
The water was spotted near the Clavius crater, one of the largest crater formations on the celestial satellite and one that can be seen with the naked eye, Paul Hayne, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado, said on a conference call with the press. Hayne is the lead author of one of the studies published on the topic.
Casey Honniball, lead author of the other study, said there are between 100 and 400 parts per million of water, or “roughly the equivalent of a 12-ounce bottle of water within a cubic meter of lunar soil.”
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This illustration highlights the Moon’s Clavius Crater with an illustration depicting water trapped in the lunar soil there, along with an image of NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) that found sunlit lunar water. (Credit: NASA)
“We had indications that H2O – the familiar water we know – might be present on the sunlit side of the Moon,” said Paul Hertz, NASA’s director of the Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate, in a statement. “Now we know it is there. This discovery challenges our understanding of the lunar surface and raises intriguing questions about resources relevant for deep space exploration.”…
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