NASA sees "significant quantities" of water on the moon

November 13th, 2009

Shortly after NASA’s LCROSS probe slammed into a crater in the polar region of the Moon, the Agency held a press conference to announce that it had obtained significant amounts of data from the collision. Unfortunately, to the frustration of many present, it wasn’t ready to interpret that data. That reticence ended today, as NASA held a press conference in which it announced that the data contains unambiguous evidence of water, present in what it termed “significant quantities.” But the signal from water isn’t the only one lurking in the data, and NASA is remaining coy about what the other signals indicate.

Back in October, the LCROSS mission sent two objects crashing into the Cabeus crater, which has an interior that is permanently shadowed due to its location in the Moon’s polar region. The first was a heavy booster rocket; its collision was imaged by instruments on the actual LCROSS probe, which followed it into the crater a few minutes later. Its collision was tracked by Earth- and space-based instruments.