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Having dropped tantalizing clues days ago about an “exciting new discovery on the Moon,” NASA has revealed conclusive evidence of water on our only natural satellite.
This illustration highlights the Clavius crater on the Moon with an illustration depicting the water trapped in the lunar soil there.
Photo: POT
This “unequivocal detection of molecular water” will boost NASA’s hopes of establishing a lunar base.
The objective is to maintain that base by taking advantage of the natural resources of the Moon.
The findings have been published as two articles in the journal. Nature astronomy.
While there have previously been signs of water on the lunar surface, these new discoveries suggest that it is more abundant than previously thought. “It gives us more options for possible sources of water on the Moon,” Hannah Sargeant, a planetary scientist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, told BBC News.
Where to put a lunar base largely focuses on where the water is. “
The US space agency has said it will send the first woman and the next man to the lunar surface in 2024 to prepare for the “next giant leap”: human exploration of Mars as early as the 2030s.
However, space scientist Dr. Duncan Steel, who has worked for both NASA and the European Space Agency, said the discovery does not mean there is life on the Moon.
“For some time we have suspected that there is water on the Moon in the form of ice, there will never be liquid water on the Moon, it would be frozen or in the form of vapor.
“In the vacuum of space, water would go from a solid state, so the ice would turn to vapor if it was heated, it would not look like liquid water as we know it here on Earth,” he said.
Water is like frost in craters near the Moon’s poles that are always shaded by sunlight, he said.
“This is a big problem because if we know that there is water on the Moon, we can use it when we establish a scientific post on the Moon, it can be used for astronauts to drink, shower and we can even divide it to get oxygen for people. use it to breathe.
“We can even get hydrogen that can be used as rocket fuel – it sounds like science fiction, but we are close to having scientists stationed on the moon,” Steel said.
It is estimated that there could be up to one liter of water per cubic meter of soil on the surface of the Moon.
NASA SOFIA plane
Photo: AFP
“That is a substantial amount and it is much more than was suspected to be there in the past, so this is a very interesting discovery.”
“It will be a great day when we can go up to the Moon and go deeper to the surface to see what is underneath, without a doubt the objective of future missions is to get closer to the poles to be able to observe these craters in greater detail,” he said.
Auckland University Physics Professor Richard Easther said scientists could make the discovery by looking at infrared light reflected off the Moon’s surface.
Professor Easther said that with so much water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere, the only way to read the surface of the Moon is to test in space or from a plane that is flying at a high enough altitude that it doesn’t pick up what there are on Earth. atmosphere.
“This discovery tells us a lot about the mineralogy of the Moon, but it also raises many questions that need to be answered, such as how it got there, how long it has been there, etc.”
Easther said the discovery and the announcement has caused many in the science world to roll their eyes, because it is not the first time that water has been discovered on the Moon.
“This is great news, it is not necessarily a breakthrough as what has been promoted, there has been a lot of talk on social media about the NASA announcement.
“It’s been a bit of an exaggeration, how many times can we say that we have found water on the Moon? This is at least the second, if not the third, that has been discovered.”
– BBC / RNZ
