What was recently found on the moon

Eventually the development of lunar water as a resource could spark an entire extraterrestrial economy in which the substance would become a lucrative feedstock for rocket fuel and other precious consumables.

He has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Credit: Nick Higgins. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options.

Go Paperless with Digital. Small Shadows, Immense Possibilities Another paper published alongside the SOFIA study in Nature Astronomy spotlights an uptick in the distribution of permanently shadowed areas on the moon—sunlight-shy places known as cold traps—in which extremely low temperatures could freeze and sequester water essentially indefinitely , allowing it to accumulate into significant deposits over geologic time.

Oblique view of the sunlit rim of Shackleton, a large, deep crater near the lunar south pole with a permanently shadowed interior that harbors substantial water ice. Get smart. Within it lingered the melty traces of the ancient impactor's core. In addition to spotting the mysterious blob, the new study retraced the boundary of the basin's inner rim, revealing that scientists previously underestimated the crater's size, a potentially important find as NASA and others prepare to send missions to the basin and the nearby lunar south pole.

The last researchers to map out these limits used data from the Clementine mission, which had a gap near the basin's southern extent.

And by improving our understanding of this structure, scientists hope to better understand the formation of bodies throughout our celestial family. On Earth, the perpetual churn of plate tectonics has been steadily erasing the planet's ancient surface and its record of early impacts. But the moon, still sporting a surface that's billions of years old, serves as an incredible record of what happened when our solar system was merely an infant—including the dramatic events that formed one of the largest known impact basins in our cosmic neighborhood.

Find out why scientists now think the moon may still have some tectonic activity. All rights reserved. Share Tweet Email. Why it's so hard to treat pain in infants.

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We thought that the water on the sunlit part of the Moon would have evaporated — but we found it! Now we must dig into how this water is created and how it persists. However, their work was often ill-read by Western scientists," the media report said.

The Yutu-2 rover woke up at p. EDT on Aug. During lunar day 9, Yutu-2 will continue its journey west, take a precautionary six-day nap around local noontime, and power down for a ninth lunar night around Sept. Follow us on Twitter Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more!

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