NASA's 'Moon Bombing:' Crashing in a Crater, Looking for Ice

By NED POTTEROct. 9, 2009
Frozen Water in Lunar Soil Could Be Boon for Future Moon Base
NASA's LCROSS mission was on final approach this morning -- a satellite and its booster rocket on course to gouge a new crater in the surface of the moon.
The space agency sent LCROSS (short for Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) to look for water in the lunar soil -- ice, to be more precise -- which scientists believe may be hidden in the lunar soil near the moon's south pole.
If they can prove it is there in sufficient quantities, it could be a boon to the space agency, which hopes in coming decades to build a lunar base and go on from there to Mars and the rest of the solar system. Such a base would be expensive and troublesome to supply -- but frozen water would make a big difference.
Melting the ice for drinking, washing and perhaps growing food in pressurized greenhouses would be the least of it. Water is, of course, H2O -- and can be broken down chemically to make hydrogen for fuel and oxygen for breathing.
"If we could live off the land, using this water -- if we discover it -- that would be a great benefit," said Jim Garvin, chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "That would mean we don't have to bring it with us."
Impact was set for 7:31 a.m. ET on Friday, and telescopes on Earth (plus the Hubble telescope in earth orbit) were watching. They used spectrometers, instruments that measure the chemical composition of the plume kicked up by the crashing rocket.