"Finding "more than 40 small craters with water ice," a NASA radar, Mini-SAR, that flew aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has confirmed the presence of substantial water ice deposits, perhaps as much as 600 million metric tons.

'The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the moon,' said Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. 'The new discoveries show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought.'

The NASA news release is here.

The Discover blog 80beats writes:

Scientists estimate that this amount of water could easily sustain a moon base, or, if the oxygen in the ice was converted to fuel, could fire one space shuttle per day for 2,200 years. Last year, scientists found almost 26 gallons of water ice on the moon’s south pole, by crashing a rocket hull into a cold, dark crater. The crash produced a plume of material that provided evidence of water ice on the moon’s surface.

Wayne

Image source: NASA

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