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Thursday, September 24, 2009

Moon has water!


Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan has found that the Lunar dust has a small apportion of water moisture, about 0.1%. Apollo project samples of Lunar dust were known to have that tiny amount of water but it was uncertain until now whether the moisture had formed in the journey to Earth or was genuine.


This finding may make the possibility of estabilishing a scientific Lunar base more feasible, as you could in principle extract the water from the soil and use it as such water, or electrolyse it into oxygen, even more necessary for human life, or even use the water molecular components, oxygen and hydrogen as portable fuel for rockets or whatever.

It is also possible that some craters, specially towards the poles, could hold significative amounts of water ice, as suggested by the strong hydrogen signal detected by NASA's Lunar Prospector towards the poles.

Source: BBC. See also this article at SD, more detailed in some aspects.
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