WORLD / Science & Health

There’s water ice on the moon, and in more places than NASA once thought

The moon’s shadowed, frigid nooks and crannies may hold frozen water in more places and in larger quantities than previously suspected, scientists reported Monday. | AP.

By Kenneth Chang
The New York Times

Oct 27, 2020

Future astronauts headed to the moon may have an easier time finding water and digging up ice than had been thought.

In a paper published in Monday’s Nature Astronomy, a team of scientists used SOFIA, an infrared telescope mounted inside a 747 jumbo jet, to make observations that showed unambiguous evidence of water on parts of the moon where the sun shines.

"This discovery reveals that water might be distributed across the lunar surface and not limited to the cold shadowed places near the lunar poles,” Paul Hertz, the director of NASA’s astrophysics division, said during a news conference Monday.