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The find is of great significance for future missions to Earth’s natural satellite.
NASA confirmed this Monday the unequivocal presence of abundant water on the Moon by verifying that the Earth’s natural satellite has many more frozen water traps than previously believed.
The water, found in reservoirs under the surface, could serve to supply the needs of human colonies that could be established permanently in the future.
The finding, announced through a teleconference broadcast live on NASA’s YouTube channel, was made thanks to the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a telescope aboard a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft, a joint project of the space agency. American and the German Aerospace Center.
The results of the observations, published in two articles in the journal Nature Astronomy, report on the detection of water molecules on the surface of the Moon that receives sunlight for the first time in history, as well as the identification of small shadow regions. permanent where this substance could remain stably trapped.
In the case of the first study, the water was detected in the Clavius crater, in the southern hemisphere of the Moon and which is visible from our planet. Scientists suspect that the water may have appeared there as a result of the impact of tiny meteorites or was formed by the interaction of energetic particles ejected from the Sun.
The discovery provides evidence that the water may not be limited to the cold, shadowed regions of our satellite, but may be distributed over its entire surface.
In turn, the authors of the second work assure that the water is in the form of small pieces of ice preserved within thousands of surface traps, distributed in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers around both poles of the Moon.
The American space agency suggests that both findings are of great importance for the Artemis program, with which NASA predicts the return of astronauts to the Moon in 2024.
More information shortly.
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