NASA: ‘There is water on the moon’ | Abroad

The journal Nature Astronomy, in which the space travel results are published, held a large press meeting on Monday because of the news. That there would be water on the moon has long been a path that scientists are investigating. But measuring instruments could not record it until now. This now happened with the SOFIA telescope, a telescope mounted on a Boeing 747.

The researchers believe that the water is in glass, created after the impact of space rocks or as a thin layer of molecules, Nieuwsblad writes. Whether the water can actually be extracted and used remains to be seen.

NASA has determined that water also occurs in places where the sun shines. In addition, there is water ice in so-called ‘cold traps’, cold spots in the shadow areas on the moon. Some of those spots are only three feet in size, but the moon has so many such spots that about 20 percent of all the ice on the moon is likely to be there.

Traces of water

It is not news that there is water on the moon. More than forty years ago, traces of water were found in the moon rocks brought by the Apollo missions. And more than two years ago, what had been suspected for years was confirmed: in dark valleys and craters near the poles of the moon, water occurs in the form of ice.

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