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Published online 18 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.931

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Water on the Moon?

Separate lunar missions indicate evidence of ice and hydrated minerals.

Eric Hand

A decade ago Faith Vilas, director of the Multiple Mirror Telescope in Arizona, developed a sideline obsession with the Moon. Perusing archived data from the Galileo mission to Jupiter, she saw something odd in the pictures taken of the Moon.

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  • Apollo LEMs burned some 60 tonnes of propellant. Compare deuterium abundance of "lunar" water to that of imported N2O4/Aerozine 50.

    • 21 Sep, 2009
    • Posted by: "Uncle Al" Schwartz

  • The CHACE instrument (Mass Spectrometer) of Chandrayaan which was part of the Moon Impact Probe mission too measured an elemental rich spectra during the descend phase of its mission.
    However, apart from few presentations in the science meet of Chandrayaan the data is yet to see the light of the day

    S.M. Ahmed, Project Manager, CHACE payload

    • 23 Sep, 2009
    • Posted by: s.m. ahmed