Lunar Ice? maybe not

[DrLeftover]

6 September 2013

To judge from an article on lunar bases on Nasa’s web site, it’s reluctant to do that. “When multiple spacecraft all found unequivocal evidence for water on the moon it was a boon to possible future lunar bases, acting as a potential source of drinking water and fuel,” the article says. It explains that the atomic components of water – hydrogen and oxygen – on the lunar surface move towards the poles, “where [water] accumulates in the cold traps of the permanently shadowed regions.” Since it was first proposed several years ago, this idea that the polar craters, particularly the so-called Shackleton crater at the south pole, are lined with ancient ice has inspired many hyperbolic newspaper stories about colonising the Moon. But it’s looking ever less likely that it is true.

A new paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters drives another nail into the coffin of lunar living. It suggests that what was at first taken to be bright, reflective ice in the Shackleton crater is in fact more likely to be white rock.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130906-blow-to-idea-of-living-on-moon