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American NASA claims to have made a significant discovery on the moon:
Large amounts of water.
The hope is that astronauts can drink the water from the moon. But a mystery remains.
Last week, NASA announced that an “exciting new discovery” had been made about the moon.
It is now clear what the US space agency has found, namely large amounts of water, several international outlets report.
The moon was thought to be dry
For a long time, it was assumed that the moon was dry, since there is no atmosphere that can isolate the surface of the moon from the sun’s rays.
In the 1990s, signs of ice were discovered on the moon. In 2009, new findings were made that indicated that there are small amounts of water in various places on the moon.
Photograph: Håkon Mosvold Larsen / TT
NASA has found water on the moon.
The new discovery, which NASA is expected to present at a press conference soon, signifies “unequivocal findings of water molecules on the moon’s surface,” writes Reuters. And much larger amounts than previously thought.
“The water is more dispersed than we think,” research leader Casey Honniball told Reuters at a NASA center in Maryland.
The mystery: where does the water come from?
The hope is that the water from the moon is drinkable and included as an ingredient to create fuel in the future.
“Water is a very expensive commodity in space,” Professor Mahesh Anand told The Guardian.
However, how water molecules originated remains a mystery to be solved.
“Right now, the biggest ‘challengers’ are comets, asteroids, small interplanetary dust particles, solar winds or the moon itself through the emission of gases from volcanic eruptions,” Paul Hayne told Reuters of the University of Colorado.
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