NASA's moon crash reveals water
NASA has announced that it found a "significant amount" of water on the moon as a result of the LCROSS impact last month.
Anthony Colaprete, a scientist on the project, estimated there were about 90 litres of water in the crater where the LCROSS spacecraft hit the moon on Oct. 9.
Colaprete presented some of NASA's data from the spacecraft's instruments, including spectrometer readings that strongly suggest the presence of water.
"Indeed, yes, we found water," Colaprete said at a news conference Friday.
NASA's discovery is the result of intentionally crashing the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite into the moon and analyzing the explosion and crater that resulted.
There were actually two impacts, the first coming when a rocket that had carried a lunar probe hit the crater Cabeus, creating a small crater of its own.
The LCROSS satellite observed the impact, as did the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Hubble Space Telescope, three other Earth-orbiting satellites, and telescopes in the western U.S. and Hawaii.
Then, the satellite itself hit the moon.
The impact didn't result in an explosion that was immediately visible, but NASA said it received a great deal of information from the experiment.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/11/13/tech-space-moon-water-lcross.html
