After Apollo: Water on the Moon?
10:03 PM
Nasa Information
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In 1972 the last Apollo astronauts came home from the moon, and that was that. The budget was tight, and they'd only found rocks. So for a quarter of a century at NASA, the moon was a dead issue.
No longer. In 1994 a military space probe called Clementine, sent to map the moon as a way of testing sensors for possible Defense Department use, found evidence of ice in the shadowed corners of craters near the moon's south pole. In 1998 a NASA probe called Lunar Prospector was sent to confirm Clementine's findings, and as it orbited the moon it found evidence of large amounts of ice in the lunar soil.
Neither ship completely settled the issue; Clementine relied on radar data, and Lunar Prospector did indirect chemical measurements. But ice on the moon? Lunar Prospector's readings, in particular, suggested there may be hundreds of billions of gallons of it. Engineers on Earth almost salivate at the thought.
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