What is the current status of water on Earth's moon?

[PTNLemay]

I remember hearing a while back that plenty of satellites were discovering hints of water on the moon, but did anything substantial ever come out of it? Did they ever discover anything more conclusive than "some hydroxyl groups were registered by our detector"?

I know there was a big deal made about deep polar craters, but so far as I know we haven't sent any probes down into those areas yet. So do we just not know yet?

EDIT:

I found this: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/10/10/water-on-moon-came-from-solar-wind/

But it doesn't seem to cover the analysis of the poles. And most articles on the poles date back to 2010-2012, back when they were first doing the studies.

Edited October 11, 2014 by PTNLemay

[magnemoe]

Think its more an issue of polar expeditions to moon is more challenging, you would be in shadow so you would need nuclear power, you will also need an relay back either an network of ground relays or satellites in polar orbit around moon

[PTNLemay]

Actually some craters at the moon's poles have high ridges, so you are exposed to sunlight almost constantly. Whereas the bottom of those craters are exposed to near permanent darkness. It's the same thing that creates a "midnight sun" in the arctic here on Earth during some seasons. The sun sits on the horizon, but because the moon has no atmosphere you'll get pretty much as much energy as if it was right above you (you just have to tilt your panels towards it accordingly). I just want to know how conclusive the studies of the bottom of those craters have been.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shackleton_(crater)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crater_of_eternal_darkness

Edited October 11, 2014 by PTNLemay

[xenomorph555]

Well luna 24 and the indian impact probe actually discovered water in the soil

[PTNLemay]

Right, but is it "We found water molcules! It's almost half as much as in the Sahara!" or is it "We strongly believe that it's a solid layer of ice 5 feet thick." Or do we still really not know which it is.

I remember the articles back in 2012 would use a lot of vague terms like "hypothesized" or "we suspect" or "might be". But no one actually ever said "yep, ice confirmed!" to my knowledge. I just want to make sure I haven't missed anything since I last checked 2-3 years ago.

[Kryten]

Well luna 24 and the indian impact probe actually discovered water in the soil

Luna 24 found hydrated minerals, it's not really the same thing as finding ice.

A lot of the trouble with these kind of statements is that, with the instruments we have, it's very hard to tell hydrated minerals or even hydroxide compounds from water. Previous apparent findings of water ice across the subsurface across most of the moon are generally agreed to just be hydrates/hydroxides, but we are pretty sure there's ice in the permanently shaded craters. Radar results how it's probably bits of ice mixed with the rest of the regolith, but how much is hard to say at this point.

[ZedNova]

A Fox news Article that isn't complete garbage?

Better call the pope because i think this is a miracle.

*On topic*

I wouldn't really be surprised if there's water on the moon, now if there was frozen bacteria in it, that would be more interesting.

[Aethon]

Ripped from yesterdays headlines.

NASA is studying how to mine the moon for water. Talk about an ambitious CubeSat mission.

http://www.space.com/27388-nasa-moon-mining-missions-water.html

[Nuke]

the regolith alone contains the oxygen needed for life. if you can find hydrogen sources somewhere, then habitability is only a nuclear reactor away. build at the poles, and you dont need no reactor. you also have iron and aluminum right in the surface dirt as well, so you can do some production. radiation shielding just means digging in.

[meve12]

...In-situ constructed solar thermal power plant?

Constructed out of lunar aluminum using lunar water as a working fluid?

[Nuke]

should be good enough to bootstrap lunar nuclear fuel production.

[magnemoe]

Ripped from yesterdays headlines.

NASA is studying how to mine the moon for water. Talk about an ambitious CubeSat mission.

http://www.space.com/27388-nasa-moon-mining-missions-water.html

Cool idea to use an solar sail to light up the target so you can take pictures

Probably pretty hard to pull off but the other method would be to use an laser who would make it an heavy probe.

Solar sail might also help with the unstable moon orbit you get around moon.

[lajoswinkler]

the regolith alone contains the oxygen needed for life. if you can find hydrogen sources somewhere, then habitability is only a nuclear reactor away. build at the poles, and you dont need no reactor. you also have iron and aluminum right in the surface dirt as well, so you can do some production. radiation shielding just means digging in.

How exactly would you reduce Al and Fe? Hot Bayer process cells and blast furnaces aren't exactly something you can build there because there aren't any reducers laying around.

The amounts of energy required for these things are for all intents and purposes - insane. It would take fantastically huge solar power plants or nuclear reactors with radiators of similar sizes.

Water on Moon is at best in the form of dispersed ice beneath regolith inside permanently shadowed craters. To get that water (and hydrogen, via electrolysis) out would require not only a huge power plant, but also lots of heavy machinery. All that regolith needs to be dug out.

[NERVAfan]

LCROSS crashed an expended stage into one of the permanently shaded craters and detected water in the ejecta - IIRC about 5%.

That probably means a much more significant (EDIT: amount) than the hydroxyl or bound water on the surface of moon rocks.