Yay - There Is 'Substantial' Water On the Moon!

This morning, the scientists at the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA), announced that last month's 'bombing' of the moon by LCROSS had been a huge success.

After analyzing the mile-high debris created, they had indeed found evidence of substantial water on the Moon's surface.

The LCROSS mission, which was televised live on October 9th, targeted an area on the Moon's South Pole, and was performed in two phases. The first phase was to create the hole, by zipping in an empty rocket traveling at 5,600km per hour, to impact the surface. Four minutes later, a spacecraft equipped with a camera was aimed at the same area, to record the impact.

Millions of people watched the whole scene unfold, as debris rose, mile high into the atmosphere. Since then, the scientists have been analyzing the evidence from the instruments known as spectrometers - built to detect evidence of any water molecules in the plume.

Not only did the spectrometers find water, but an abundance of it - almost twenty-five gallons, which opens the possibility of astronauts being able to set up a base camp there, and then carry on to Mars, which has been the ultimate aim of this whole experiment.

While the scientists are still analyzing the moon dust to see what else was kicked up by the blast, and are not sure whether there is water anywhere else on the moon, they are thrilled at finally finding this irrefutable evidence - one that has been eluding them for decades!

sources cnn.com, dailymail.co.uk