Lunar Water Ice

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Water preserved as ice in the Moon's permanently shadowed polar regions, plus smaller amounts bound in sunlit regolith. The evidence accumulated over three decades and from independent methods: Clementine bistatic radar in 1996 (contested at the time), Lunar Prospector's neutron spectrometer detecting excess hydrogen at both poles in 1998, Chandrayaan-1's Moon Mineralogy Mapper detecting hydroxyl and water absorption features in 2009, the LCROSS impact plume the same year, and SOFIA's 2020 detection of molecular water in sunlit terrain near Clavius crater. Its significance to Artemis is practical rather than scientific: water is drinking water, breathable oxygen, radiation shielding and — split by electrolysis — hydrogen and oxygen propellant that would not have to be lifted out of Earth's gravity well. How much there is, in what physical form, at what depth, and whether it can be extracted at useful rates all remain open.

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