LCROSS Impact Data: Lunar Water Ice

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Bloomberg:

Lunar Crater Holds ‘Significant’ Amount of Water, NASA Says

By Ryan Flinn

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- NASA found a “significant amount” of water in a crater near the moon’s south pole, the agency said today in unveiling the results of an experiment that slammed a rocket into the lunar surface.

“Yes, we found water,” said Anthony Colaprete, a project scientist for the so-called Lcross mission, during a televised news conference today at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “We found a significant amount,” enough to fill about a dozen 2-gallon (7.6-liter) buckets, he said.

Lcross, which stands for Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, crashed into the moon’s surface Oct. 9. The Northrop Grumman Corp. built the $79 million craft, comprised of a rocket and a followup probe, which plunged into a permanently darkened crater near the moon’s south pole.

In last month’s mission, the probe flew through a dust plume kicked up by the first impact, to observe the cloud’s contents and transmit data to Earth.

Ice on the moon could supply future explorers with drinking water or air for breathing and rocket fuel, once broken down into hydrogen and oxygen, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The water could have come from a comet or from the solar wind, Greg Delory, a senior fellow at the Space Sciences Laboratory and Center for Integrative Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, said at the press conference.

Last Updated: November 13, 2009 12:44 EST

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