Water on the Moon found in Surprising Place says NASA
Unlike the ice trapped in perpetually dark craters, NASA announced this week that they have new evidence of water on the Moon – is a fully sunlit crater.
With no atmosphere on the moon, finding water in the lunar soil in an area in full sunlight was the last thing anyone expected. But in the announcement NASA said that its, Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has in fact confirmed the existence of water on the sunlit surface of the Moon.
“Without a thick atmosphere, water on the sunlit lunar surface should just be lost to space,” said Honniball, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Yet somehow we’re seeing it. Something is generating the water, and something must be trapping it there.”
SOFIA is essentially an observatory, with a 106-inch diameter telescope, built into a Boeing 747 aircraft. Using this as their platform, astronomers are able to fly high above most of the Earth’s atmosphere for a better view of the universe.
SOFIA is usually focused on deep-sky objects like star clusters and galaxies. But in something of a test, the team tried looking at the moon. They were testing to see if the telescope’s tracking system would be able to lock-on to an object so close.
“It was, in fact, the first time SOFIA has looked at the Moon, and we weren’t even completely sure if we would get reliable data, but questions about the Moon’s water compelled us to try,” said Naseem Rangwala, SOFIA’s project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.
“It’s incredible that this discovery came out of what was essentially a test, and now that we know we can do this, we’re planning more flights to do more observations.”
The water was found, using an infrared camera on the SOFIA Telescope, in the Clavius Crater. Clavius is easily seen from the Earth near the southern end of the Moon.
Some earlier discoveries of hydrogen on the lunar surface were not able to distinguish between H2O (water) and OH (hydroxyl). However, the readings by SOFIA were in the unique wavelengths specific to water.
Finding water on the moon is a huge plus for plans to begin building a sustainable colony there by the end of the decade. But before you get too excited, the amount of water is as yet uncertain.
Based on the SOFIA data, current estimates put the amount of water in the lunar soil at about 100 times less than the amount of water in sand of the Sahara Desert. Despite the small amounts, the finding shows that anything is possible, and has positive implications for future exploration.
“This discovery challenges our understanding of the lunar surface and raises intriguing questions about resources relevant for deep space exploration,” said NASA’s Paul Hertz.
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