- Earlier this year scientists made the
historic announcement that they had found ice on the moon buried at the
lunar poles.
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- The discovery was made just weeks after
the Lunar Prospector spacecraft entered the moon's orbit on the 16 January.
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- Refined calculations of the amount of
lunar water are 10-times higher than the lower limit estimated earlier
this year. The new research is published in Science magazine.
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- The new analysis also shows that the
water is confined to localised areas near the poles, rather than spread
out evenly across the polar regions, as was assumed.
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- The ice appears to be buried about half
a meter beneath the lunar surface. There may be as much as three billion
tonnes of water at each of the lunar poles. There may be slightly more
at the north than the south pole.
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- When they presented their initial results
in March, the scientists said that the water was likely in the form of
a fine frost spread through the lunar soil. Further data analysis suggests
the exciting possibility that their may be shallow deposits of ice.
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- Scientists assume that comets carried
the water ice to the moon.
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- Lunar Prospector's instruments have also
been surveying the moon's surface composition and have discovered that
one well-known lunar feature - the huge Mare Imbrium basin - is unlike
anything else of the moon.
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- "The mission has been an overwhelming
success," said scientist Bill Feldman. "We have got beautiful
science from two or three of our instruments. The third, we just have not
had time to analyse the data yet."
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- According to another scientist working
on the project, Rick Elphic: "We have barely begun scratching the
surface of the analysis. We have not begun to touch on the many ramifications
for the origin and evolution of the moon.
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- "Something special happened around
Mare Imbrium - you do not see this sort of chemistry anywhere else on the
moon."
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