The finding by NASA's miniSAR aboard Indian probe Chadrayaan-1 has detected ice deposits at the Moon's poles, making the presence of water in the Moon even more official (see previous posts on this matter: here and here). More at Science Daily. The real obstacles for more or less permanent human presence on the Moon are then others, notably the lack of a natural shield against solar radiation (and cosmic radiation in general).
And apparently lots of it. These are the results of a NASA probe (Centaur) that intently impacted on a Lunar crater in order to raise a plume of debris that could be analyzed by telescopes and the Lunar satellite LCROSS. The plume was smaller than expected but after due research in the last weeks it has been determined beyond doubt that a good deal of it was water vapor. In fact, the water detected was more than 100 Kg. (100 liters at normal Earth pressures and temperatures, I guess). Future research will determine if this finding is confirmed and if there is water also in other spots. If so, the path for space colonization would be a step closer to reality. However we must remember that the conditions in space and other planetary objects out there are highly hostile: extreme cold, radiation and lack of naturally breathable atmospheres make the whole affair still extremely difficult, much more than colonizing frozen Anctartica for example. Source: BBC..
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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The old theory of what killed the dinosaurs, along with 65% of contemporary species, was an impact of a meteorite from outer space has been dismissed by recent methodic research that shows that the Chicxulub crater at Yucatan is actually 300,000 years older than the K/T event and that it actually caused the extinction of no known species whatsoever. Instead the eruption of a supervolcano in India and the radical climatic alterations it caused was the responsible for the massive extinction. Read more at Science Daily. This basically removes any major pretext for the meteorite-hunting paranoia, of likely hidded military goals, that we have been bombed with in the media. It's not imposible that a sizeable meteorite hits us sometime in the (likely quite distant future) but it won't kill us as species. Instead it is much more likely that we kill ourselves by means of unconsiderate global warming (no need of a supervolcano this time: we do it on our own arrogant idiocy). .
The latest news is that Saturn's Moon Titan also seems to have an liquid ocean under the crust of ice (ref1, ref2). But it's not the first such body to be discovered: Jupiter's satellites Callisto, Ganymede and Europa also have subsurface oceans. Additionally dwarf planet Ceres also has a large mantle of ice-water that may be as much as 60% of its total volume and that is more freshwater than can be found on Earth.
We are still trying to find out if there is water on (or rather in) Mars but in any case it seems that water is much more common than we first thought in our little stellar system. This offers lots of posibilities: first of all the potential of naturally existing life, even if of microbial type maybe, in some of these bodies - but also, long term thinking, it may be of help for space exploration, as water can be a source not only of the much needed liquid that makes up 70% of our bodies but also of oxygen to breath.
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