Image copyright NASA Image caption The distribution of surface water-ice at the Moon's south pole (left) and north pole (right)

Scientists say they have definitive evidence for water-ice on the surface of the Moon. NASA said in a statement: “At the southern pole, most of the ice is concentrated at lunar craters, while the northern pole’s ice is more widely, but sparsely spread.”

The incredible finding was made by a team of researchers led by Shuai Li of the University of Hawaii and Brown University. A team of scientists, led by Shuai Li of the University of Hawaii and Brown University and including Richard Elphic from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, used data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument to identify three specific signatures that definitively prove there is water ice at the surface of the Moon. The ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) and other scientists were able to use data harvested by M3, which was created by NASA JPL in Pasadena, California, traveling aboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft to reach their findings. It collected data that not only picked up the reflective properties we’d expect from ice, but was able to directly measure the distinctive way its molecules absorb infrared light, so it can differentiate between liquid water or vapor and solid ice. The vast majority of the ice exists in areas that are in the shadows of craters located on or around each pole where the temperature is not known to rise above minus 250 Fahrenheit, per the BBC. Signs of ice on the Moon have been reported by scientists for years, but previous observations could have been explained by other phenomena, such as unusually reflective lunar soil, the study authors said. With enough ice sitting at the surface – within the top few millimeters – water would possibly be accessible as a resource for future expeditions to explore and even stay on the Moon, and potentially easier to access than the water detected beneath the Moon’s surface. While being careful to not overestimate what this discovery could possibly mean for future lunar missions or the potential for colonization, there was an underlying enthusiasm for new possibilities in their study published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Photograph: PNAS

The images are the first “direct and definitive evidence” of water ice that is exposed on the surface of the moon, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Ice is confirmed at the Moon's poles.