Richseen

the Moon · All Worlds · Explore · 3005 BCE–1926 · 0 of 37 located marks in focus · editorial corpus · no live source connected

natural resource

Lunar Water Ice

Water preserved as ice in the Moon's permanently shadowed polar regions, plus smaller amounts bound in sunlit regolith.

No recorded place ·

is first directly measured of LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) — Spectra of the ejecta plume gave water at 5.6 ± 2.9 per cent by mass — the first direct measurement of water inside a lunar cold trap rather than an inference from remote sensing.
concentrated in Lunar South Pole Region — The Moon's 1.5° axial tilt leaves polar crater floors in permanent shadow below about 100 K, cold enough to trap water for billions of years; no equatorial site retains ice at the surface.
motivates target of Artemis Program — Water is the reason Artemis goes to the pole rather than the equator: drinking water, breathable oxygen, shielding and hydrogen–oxygen propellant that would otherwise have to be lifted out of Earth's gravity well — the resource case Apollo never had.

natural resource

Water preserved as ice in the Moon's permanently shadowed polar regions, plus smaller amounts bound in sunlit regolith.

No recorded place ·

is first directly measured of LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) — Spectra of the ejecta plume gave water at 5.6 ± 2.9 per cent by mass — the first direct measurement of water inside a lunar cold trap rather than an inference from remote sensing.
concentrated in Lunar South Pole Region — The Moon's 1.5° axial tilt leaves polar crater floors in permanent shadow below about 100 K, cold enough to trap water for billions of years; no equatorial site retains ice at the surface.
motivates target of Artemis Program — Water is the reason Artemis goes to the pole rather than the equator: drinking water, breathable oxygen, shielding and hydrogen–oxygen propellant that would otherwise have to be lifted out of Earth's gravity well — the resource case Apollo never had.