Thanks to NASA and the LCROSS satellite, I may soon know where the best place is to build my Moon Base. A new analysis of the data from the Lunar Prospector, launched in 1998, shows large concentrations of hydrogen around the lunar poles. If that hydrogen is in water form, then astronauts could potentially use it on a permanent outpost.
Certain lunar craters are permanently shadowed, never reaching temperatures above -170 C. Many of these areas also contain significant amounts of hydrogen. If that hydrogen is attached to oxygen in water ice form, it should be stable for millions of years. Astronauts deployed to a base near one of these sites could use this water since hauling it from Earth would be prohibitive.
Dr Vincent Eke, in the Institute for Computational Cosmology, at Durham University, said that water ice may be present in huge quantities in these craters: "If the hydrogen is present as water ice then our results imply that the top meter of the moon holds about enough water to fill up Kielder Water." Kielder Water is a manmade reservoir in the UK that holds 200 billion liters of water.
As exciting as the new analysis from the Lunar Prospector is, it's possible that much of that hydrogen is present because it was deposited there by the Sun. The solar wind contains protons, which impact the dusty surface of the moon and stay there.
