science

Water on the Moon: NASA claims 'significantly' more water on Moon than previously thought


 data collected over the Moon’s polar regions suggests shallow craters “may contain significantly more water ice than previously thought”. Similar deposits of ice are also lurking in the polar regions of Mercury – the closest planet to the Sun. If confirmed, NASA said the incredible finding will extend the amount of time future manned missions will spend on the Moon. The discovery was made possible by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and MESSENGER spacecraft. 

Lior Rubanenko of the University of California, Los Angeles(UCLA), who led a study into the potential ice deposits, said: “We found shallow craters tend to be located in areas where surface ice was previously detected near the south pole of the Moon and inferred this shallowing is most likely due to the presence of buried thick ice deposits.” 

Past observations of Mercury have found “glacier-like” deposits of ice on the innermost planet of our system. 

But astronomers have never found similar deposits of frozen water on the Moon. 

According to NASA, the poles of Mercury and the Moon are some of the coldest known regions in our system. 

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Because of the Moon’s and Mercury’s positioning and spin, the Sun never creeps high over their horizon near the poles. 

As a result, many of the shadowy impact craters dotting their pockmarked surfaces have never seen the light of day. 

The permanent darkness sets the stage for freezing temperatures that allow water to “potentially survive for billions of years”. 

Nancy Chabot, an instrument scientist for NASA’s MESSENGER probe, said: “We showed Mercury’s polar deposits to be dominantly composed of water ice and extensively distributed in both Mercury’s north and south polar regions. 

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“Mercury’s ice deposits appear to be much less patchy than those on the Moon, and relatively fresh, perhaps emplaced or refreshed within the last tens of millions of years.” 

But unlike Mercury, where the water is believed to be pure, lunar ice is believed to be mixed with Moondust or regolith. 

And until now, past studies of the Moon have only found “patchy, shallow ice deposits”. 

The team at UCLA picked apart these differences by analysing approximately 15,000 craters on the Moon and Mercury. 

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The impact craters measured anywhere between 1.5 miles to 9.3 miles in diameter (2.5k to 15km). 

The researchers found craters near the north pole of Mercury and the south pole of the Moon are up to 10 percent shallower – but not near the Moon’s north pole. 

The explanation, according to the researchers, is the presence of previously undetected ice deposits in the craters. 

NASA said: The scientists found that these inferred buried ice deposits are correlated with the locations of already detected surface ice.” 

The lunar study was published on July 22 in the journal Nature Geoscience.



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