OK, Mr. *Me* who's been pissing on the moon?
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Washington - As much as 10 billion tons of water may be frozen near
the moon's poles, according to data from a lunar spacecraft - water
enough to build a moon village or to fuel rocket ships cruising even
deeper into space.
"There is an abundance of hydrogen at both lunar poles and we
interpret that to mean there is water there," said Alan Binder, chief
scientist for the Lunar Prospector spacecraft now orbiting the moon.
"There is at least one billion tons of water, but there could be as much
as 10 billion tons."
That would be 10 times the amount previously estimated, he said.
"We knew from the Apollo missions that we could go to the moon and
build a base there, but we would have to take our water and fuel with
us," Binder said. The deposits of water or hydrogen, he said, are "an
enabling resource. You could build a colony without it, but this really
makes it a lot simpler."
In addition to sustaining life in such a colony, water also can be
used for rocket fuel by breaking it into its constituent chemicals -
hydrogen and oxygen. Propellant for the space shuttle's main engines,
for instance, is hydrogen and oxygen.
Paul Spudis, a researcher at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in
Houston, called the discovery significant: "We've debated for 30 years
whether or not there is ice on the moon and now this shows there is."
Spudis was on the science team of an earlier lunar mission - the
Clementine spacecraft - that found radar indications of water on the
lunar south pole. Now, he said, the presence of lunar water has been
confirmed by two different research methods.
"This makes colonizing the moon a lot more attractive," said Ed
Weiler, a space scientist at NASA. "I think before we colonize to Mars
we need to colonize the moon for practice, so from that perspective,
this is a major discovery."
Copyright 1998, Newsday Inc.
Water at Moon's Poles, Scientists Conclude., 09-04-1998, pp A28. |
