First global map of water on Moon created

In research that may prove useful to future lunar explorers, scientists from Brown University have created the first quantitative map of water and its chemical building blocks trapped in the uppermost portion of the Moon's soil. The latest study uses a new calibration of data taken from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, which flew aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, to quantify how much water is present on a global scale.

"The signature of water is present nearly everywhere on the lunar surface, not limited to the polar regions as previously reported," said the study's lead author, Shuai Li. "The amount of water increases toward the poles and does not show significant difference among distinct compositional terrains."

"This is a roadmap to where water exists on the surface of the Moon," said Ralph Milliken, an associate professor at Brown and Li's co-author. "Now that we have these quantitative maps showing where the water is and in what amounts, we can start thinking about whether or not it could be worthwhile to extract, either as drinking water for astronauts or to produce fuel."