国产热热热精品,亚洲视频久久】日韩,三级婷婷在线久久,99人妻精品视频,精品九热人人肉肉在线,AV东京热一区二区,91po在线视频观看,久久激情宗合,青青草黄色手机视频

Global General

Special

Newsmaker

Asia Pacific

America

Middle East

Europe

Africa

Missions find evidence of water on the moon

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-09-24 16:45

WASHINGTON: Three separate missions examining the moon have found clear evidence of water there, apparently concentrated at the poles and possibly formed by the solar wind.

The reports, to be published in the journal Science on Friday, show the water may be actively moving around, forming and reforming as particles mixed up in the dust on the surface of the moon.

Carle Pieters of Brown University in Rhode Island and colleagues reviewed data from India's Chandrayaan-1 mission -- India's first mission to the moon -- and found spectrographic evidence of water. The water seems thicker closer to the poles, they reported.

Related readings:  Vanishing moon rocks  Moon may light man's future  "New Moon" rises at Comic-Con  New evidence of water on moon New study finds water in moon rocks

"When we say 'water on the moon,' we are not talking about lakes, oceans or even puddles. Water on the moon means molecules of water and hydroxyl (hydrogen and oxygen) that interact with molecules of rock and dust specifically in the top millimeters of the moon's surface," Pieters said in a statement.

Jessica Sunshine of the University of Maryland and colleagues used infrared mapping from the Deep Impact spacecraft to show water all over the moon, while Roger Clark of the US Geological Survey and colleagues used a spectrometer -- which breaks down light waves to analyze elements and chemicals reflecting them -- from the Cassini spacecraft to identify water.

"These reports of lunar surface water coincide with intense interest in water at the poles of the Moon," Paul Lucey of the University of Hawaii, who was not involved in the research, wrote in a commentary.

"There may be much 'wetter' regions to be discovered far from the sites that have been sampled to date," Lucey added.

"It is also possible that rare water-bearing minerals previously observed in lunar samples, but argued to be terrestrial contamination, might be indigenous. Perhaps the most valuable result of these new observations is that they prompt a critical reexamination of the notion that the Moon is dry. It is not."

Next month, NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite or LCROSS mission will try to detect water by deliberately crashing a large spacecraft onto the moon.