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Deep Impact and Other Spacecraft Find Clear Evidence of Water on Moon
September 25, 2009New data from the Deep Impact spacecraft and the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), an instrument aboard India's recently ended Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, provide, for the first time, clear evidence that water exists on the surface of the Moon. "The Deep Impact observations of the Moon not only unequivocally confirm the presence of OH/H2O on the lunar surface, but also reveal that the entire lunar surface is hydrated during at least some portions of the lunar day," write University of Maryland astronomer Jessica Sunshine and co-authors in a paper on the Deep Impact data published online in the September 24 issue of the journal Science. "Finding water on the Moon in daylight is a huge surprise, even if it is only a small amount of water and only in the form of molecules stuck to soil," said Sunshine, lead author of the Deep Impact paper and a co-author of a companion Science paper based on data from the M3 instrument that first detected the presence of lunar water. Prevailing scientific opinion long has been that there probably is no water on the Moon and that, even if it does exist, it would be only in permanently cold, shadowed craters at the lunar poles. Full release.