For most of the space age, the moon has been considered a waterless world. In recent years, however, a steady drip-drip of discovery has shown that …
NASA Says There's Water on the Moon: Why Does It Matter?
In a breakthrough discovery, NASA announced that the moon may contain more water than originally thought, including on its sunlit surface. The findings were observed using NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) telescope and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. But what does finding lunar water mean for humanity? Take a look at why scientists view this as an achievement.
[/caption] The Moon has been turned upside down. Figuratively, of course. La Luna still orbits and phases as it always has, but we are now looking at …
NASA’s interest in lunar water is not purely academic. It was a ten-hour flight from takeoff to landing, wheels up just after 6 P.M., from Palmdale, California, out over the Pacific. For the first nine hours and forty minutes, Casey Honniball, a twenty-seven-year-old planetary scientist, didn’t have …
For two decades, scientists have puzzled over the presence of water ice on the moon; now, they think they might know how it got there. A new study …
The permanently shadowed craters at the moon’s south pole are both the first and last place lunar astronauts would want to spend their time. The appeal is that they have generous deposits of water ice, a critical resource for any potential lunar base (ice means drinking water, yes, but it also …
The lunar supply won’t be anything like the stuff on Earth, but NASA wants it anyway. Ten years ago, a rocket slammed into the moon. The impact sent a plume of lunar material from the moon’s south pole flying out into space. For a few minutes, the spacecraft that had unleashed the rocket coasted …
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Water ice is thought to be trapped in large permanently shadowed regions in the Moon’s polar regions, due to their extremely low temperatures. Here, …
Widespread hydration was detected on the lunar surface through observations of a characteristic absorption feature at 3 µm by three independent …
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Earth's space journey to the Moon, Mars and beyond.