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The most exacting analysis yet of the moon's mysterious polar craters found no sign of the vast expanses of ice that scientists had hoped future lunar colonists could someday mine for precious, life-sustaining water... |
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| Study: Moon has Little Water after all (November 2003) |
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The findings do not mean there is no ice in the permanently shaded craters. But if there is ice, it is probably mixed into the lunar soil in widely scattered flecks or in thin layers. "It certainly would have been nice to find some sort of lunar skating rink, or thick layers of ice, but it looks like it's just not there," said Bruce Campbell of the Smithsonian Institution's Centre for Earth and Planetary Studies. He and colleagues at Cornell University used the mammoth radar dish at Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory to bounce radio waves off the craters. They probed more deeply than ever before into the craters' floors -- as far as 20 feet down in the soil. Like earlier Earth-based radar imaging that probed only a few feet below the craters, the latest analysis showed no sign of thick ice layers. The findings appear in Thursday's issue of the journal NatureThe findings do not mean there is no ice in the permanently shaded craters. But if there is ice, it is probably mixed into the lunar soil in widely scattered flecks or in thin layers. "It certainly would have been nice to find some sort of lunar skating rink, or thick layers of ice, but it looks like it's just not there," said Bruce Campbell of the Smithsonian Institution's Centre for Earth and Planetary Studies. He and colleagues at Cornell University used the mammoth radar dish at Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory to bounce radio waves off the craters. They probed more deeply than ever before into the craters' floors -- as far as 20 feet down in the soil. Like earlier Earth-based radar imaging that probed only a few feet below the craters, the latest analysis showed no sign of thick ice layers. The findings appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature... |
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