Scientists have long argued as to whether there is water on the moon or not. Now, after decades of debate, NASA has solved the mystery: Water has been confirmed on the sunlit surface of the moon, and it’s not just in the form of ice limited to the shadowed surfaces of larger craters as previously thought.
In a couple of papers published by the journal Nature, NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) detailed how water is capable of surviving on the moon, even when exposed by the warming radiation of the sun. This was unveiled when the team identified liquid water’s unique fingerprint near the southern pole of the Moon. It’s not there as a “puddle of water,” but as spread out molecules of H20.
As reported in Futurism, it’s not a whole lot of water, with about 12 liquid ounces in a cubic meter of soil. But it does raise new possibilities for human settlement on our natural satellite: if water can survive on the moon, then we might be able to as well.
There are still many questions that need to be answered. For instance, is it possible to extract water that is completely mixed in with soil? And is there enough water to support human settlement?
While we may not have answers now, we can reasonably expect answers relatively soon: after all, NASA wants to establish a permanent human presence on the moon by the end of the decade.
