Water found on moon, NASA announces
Lisa M. Krieger
Issue date: 11/20/09 Section: News
"It was about 3 a.m. and we'd been working around the clock," Colaprete said. "Working through the data, I kept coming back to that 1.4 micron feature suggesting water. I kept coming back to it, then sent out a post. They said, 'It's got to be real.'''
The rocket didn't land on a frozen lake. Rather, the water seems to be mixed in with dust and other volatile chemicals.
While not as soggy as, say, Portland, "it's wetter than some deserts on Earth," Colaprete said.
If the water is not too contaminated by toxic chemicals, it could be drinkable, he said.
"We have all this new data to work through to learn what the moon is telling us," said team member Gregory Delory, senior fellow of the Space Sciences Institute at University of California-Berkeley.
The next step, he said, is to learn where it came from and how plentiful it is as well as what other chemicals are involved.
"This is not your father's moon," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist for Exploration Systems at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "This is not a dead planetary body, but one with a lot of dynamism in it. We are excited today for a lot of different reasons."
The rocket didn't land on a frozen lake. Rather, the water seems to be mixed in with dust and other volatile chemicals.
While not as soggy as, say, Portland, "it's wetter than some deserts on Earth," Colaprete said.
If the water is not too contaminated by toxic chemicals, it could be drinkable, he said.
"We have all this new data to work through to learn what the moon is telling us," said team member Gregory Delory, senior fellow of the Space Sciences Institute at University of California-Berkeley.
The next step, he said, is to learn where it came from and how plentiful it is as well as what other chemicals are involved.
"This is not your father's moon," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist for Exploration Systems at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "This is not a dead planetary body, but one with a lot of dynamism in it. We are excited today for a lot of different reasons."
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posted 11/23/09 @ 7:21 PM CST
This is increduble news!
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