During a press conference Monday, NASA confirmed the existence of water on the moon’s sunlit surface, indicating water is not limited to the moon’s cratered, cold crevices.
“We had indications that H2O—the familiar water we know—might be present on the sunlit side of the Moon,” said Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Now we know it is there. This discovery challenges our understanding of the lunar surface and raises intriguing questions about resources relevant for deep space exploration.”
Scientists first confirmed the presence of water ice on the lunar surface in 2018. However, subsequent research published Monday in Nature Astronomy—carried out in part by the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA—confirmed the existence of water molecules in the Clavius Crater, among the largest craters on the Moon visible from Earth. Comparatively, the Sahara Desert has 100 times more water in its soil than the sunlit areas on the moon examined by NASA, which appear to contain about one 12-ounce bottle of water per cubic meter of soil.
Yet officials said water’s existence at all in these extreme surface conditions bears further investigation, including how it may impact NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to send the first woman and next man to the moon in 2024. SOFIA is a modified Boeing 747SP jetliner equipped with a 106-inch diameter telescope that flies at altitudes of up to 45,000 feet, far above the vast majority of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Using its infrared camera, SOFIA picked up specific wavelengths signifying water molecules on the moon.
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