Splash! NASA moon crash struck lots of water

LOS ANGELES – The lunar dud for space enthusiasts has become a watershed event for NASA.
Spacecraft
that crashed into the moon last month kicked up a relatively small
plume. But scientists have confirmed the debris contained water — 25
gallons of it — making lunar exploration exciting again.

Experts have long suspected there was water on the moon.
So the thrilling discovery announced Friday sent a ripple of hope for a
future astronaut outpost in a place that has always seemed barren and
inhospitable.
"We found water. And we didn't
find just a little bit. We found a significant amount," Anthony
Colaprete, lead scientist for the mission, told reporters as he held up
a white water bucket for emphasis.
He said the 25 gallons of water the lunar crash kicked up was only what scientists could see from the plumes of the impact.
Some
space policy experts say that makes the moon attractive for exploration
again. Having an abundance of water would make it easier to set up a
base camp for astronauts, supplying drinking water and a key ingredient for rocket fuel.
"Having
definitive evidence that there is substantial water is a significant
step forward in making the moon an interesting place to go," said George Washington University space policy scholar John Logsdon.
The
October mission involved two strikes into a permanently shadowed crater
near the south pole. First, an empty rocket hull slammed into the
Cabeus crater. Then, a trailing spacecraft recorded the drama live
before it also crashed into the same spot four minutes later.
Though
scientists were overjoyed with the plethora of data beamed back to
Earth, the mission was a public relations dud. Space enthusiasts who
stayed up all night to watch the spectacle did not see the promised
giant plume of debris.
NASA scientists had
predicted the twin impacts would spew six miles of dust into the
sunlight. Instead, images revealed only a mile-high plume, and it was
not visible to many amateur astronomers peering through telescopes.
Members of the blue-ribbon panel reviewing NASA's
future plans said the discovery doesn't change their conclusion that
the program needs more money to get beyond near-Earth orbit. The panel
wants NASA to look at other potential destinations like asteroids and
Mars.
"This new and terrific result reassures us about lunar resources, but ... the challenges currently facing the human spaceflight program remain," Chris Chyba, a Princeton astrophysicist who is on the panel, said in an e-mail.
President
George W. Bush had proposed a more than $100 billion plan to return
astronauts to the moon, then go on to Mars; a test flight of an early
version of a new rocket was a success last month. President Barack Obama appointed the special panel to look at the entire moon exploration program. The decision is now up to the White House, and NASA's lunar plans are somewhat on hold until then.
As
for unmanned exploration, previous missions had detected the presence
of hydrogen in lunar craters near the moon's poles, possible evidence
of ice. In September, scientists reported finding tiny amounts of water
in the lunar soil all over the moon's surface.
But
it was NASA's Oct. 9 mission involving the Lunar Crater Observation and
Sensing Satellite, LCROSS, that provided the stunning confirmation
announced Friday — water, in the forms of ice and vapor.
"Rather
than a dead and unchanging world, it could in fact be a very dynamic
and interesting one," said Greg Delory of the University of California,
Berkeley, who was not involved in the mission, led by NASA's Ames
Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.
The LCROSS spacecraft only hit one spot on the moon and it's unclear how much water there is across the entire moon.
Scientists spent a month analyzing data from the spacecraft's spectrometers, instruments that can detect strong signals of water molecules in the plume.
"We've had hints that there is water. This was almost like tasting it," said Peter Schultz, professor of geological sciences at Brown University and a co-investigator on the LCROSS mission.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who in 1969 made his historic Apollo 11 moonwalk with Neil Armstrong, was pleased to hear the latest discovery, but still believes the U.S. should focus on colonizing Mars.
"People will overreact to this news and say, `Let's have a water rush to the moon,'" Aldrin said. "It doesn't justify that."
Mission scientists said it would take more time to tease out what else was kicked up in the moon dust.
___
AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:
LCROSS mission: http://www.nasa.gov/mission(underscore)pages/LCROSS/main/

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091114/ap_on_sc/us_sci_shoot_the_moon