In Search For Lunar Ice Water

(Hat Tip: Lunar News Network)

In an attempt to discover water upon the moons surface, NASA is preparing one of two probes on a kamikaze mission towards the surface. The idea behind the stunt is to determine whether or not the southern pole contains ice water--a critical element if we are to establish future colony.

(Space.com) "I think aggressively touching the Moon is an understatement," said Scott Horowitz, NASA's associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, in a Monday press conference.

"What this mission buys is an early attempt to know what some of the resources we're going to have...we know for sure that for human exploration to succeed we're going to have to essentially live off the land."

While one probe suffers an early death, the purpose of the other craft is to analyze the "flying debris" for signs of ice water. Unfortunately it seems as if NASA is having way too much fun and has decided that the second probe will suffer a similar fate of its sibling.

(Space.com) The 1,940-pound (880-kilogram) LCROSS probe will fly through the resulting plume and use its instruments to scan for water while taking photographs, then--15 minutes after the upper stage booster's impact--the "shepherding" satellite will also crash into the crater floor, Andrews said.

"We know that we can steer it sufficiently to sample another region of the crater," Andrews said, adding that smashing into the same place twice would likely not yield additional valuable data.

Ladies and gentlemen, your tax payer's money at work.

If water is discovered (in abundance) then that would indicate that a thriving colony on the moon could be possible. If not then we could always haul tons of it from the Pacific ocean.



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