NASA discovers water on the moon!

NASA announced a spacecraft that purposely slammed into the moon has turned up evidence of water.

NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite probe discovered beds of water ice at the lunar south pole when it impacted the moon last month.

The LCROSS probe impacted the lunar south pole at a crater called Cabeus on Oct. 9. The $79 million spacecraft, preceded by its Centaur rocket stage, hit the lunar surface in an effort to create a debris plume that could be analyzed by scientists for signs of water ice.

Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator from NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California:

Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn’t find just a little bit, we found a significant amount

Scientists have long suspected that permanently shadowed craters at the south pole of the moon could be cold enough to sustain water frozen at the surface and have been analyzing a mile-high plume of debris kicked up by the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.

(Water has already been detected on the moon by a NASA-built instrument on board India’s now defunct Chandrayaan-1 probe and other spacecraft, though it was in very small amounts and bound to the dirt and dust of the lunar surface)

NASA plans to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 for extended missions on the lunar surface.

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