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NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has returned data that indicate ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in a crater located on the moon's south pole.
So apparently, yes. Less than the Sahara Desert, but water all the same.
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This is interesting considering that Moon Bases are big part of sci-fi and now NASA is trying to make one reality.
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Plenty, actually. The Russians showed in the 70s, that the Moon's Regolith contains on average about 0,1% water by mass up to a depth of ~100m. Now granted, extracting it would be quite a task and given how fluffy regolith is, it isn't that much by mass, but still, it's there. And with a sufficiently advanced recycling system, you only need a larger mass of water once.
And if all else fails, well, we have the ability to land probes on comets now. And given that comets almost solely consist of water-ice... Let's bombard the moon with comets.
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Just imagine when we have a moon colony? Or that we could be in another solar system in 20 years, doing tests? Exciting times - at least for space nerds. XD
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Madner Kami wrote: ↑Wed May 22, 2019 8:45 pm
Plenty, actually. The Russians showed in the 70s, that the Moon's Regolith contains on average about 0,1% water by mass up to a depth of ~100m. Now granted, extracting it would be quite a task and given how fluffy regolith is, it isn't that much by mass, but still, it's there. And with a sufficiently advanced recycling system, you only need a larger mass of water once.
And if all else fails, well, we have the ability to land probes on comets now. And given that comets almost solely consist of water-ice... Let's bombard the moon with comets.
I was thinking more of the potential as a refueling station. Semi permanent habitation is just a bonus.
The first thing built besides habitation should be a observatory.
