NASA moves forward with planned moon base

by Steven Mostyn - Oct 22 2010, 06:20

Plans to construct a lunar base upon the moon have taken another step forward this week after NASA revealed there could be enough frozen water hidden beneath its surface to help sustain a permanent human presence. 

The findings arrive on the back of data gathered by its Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which worked in tandem to record and analyse debris content thrown up from the moon after the U.S. space administration slammed part of an Atlus V rocket into a 60-mile-wide surface crater in late 2009.

Detailing its mission in the journal Science, NASA describes how the impact created a debris plume that rose more than half a mile above the moon's surface, allowing sensors aboard the LCROSS platform to detect approximately 155 kilos of ice.

According to Anthony Colaprete of NASA's Ames Research Centre in California, current estimates suggest around 5.6 percent of the material held within the Atlus V impact crater is frozen water.

Data gathered by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter also found that heat created by the impact released around 300 kilos of water ice from the moon's surface as the spent rocket caused a temporary surface temperature increase from -233C to 677C.

In terms of providing life-sustaining assistance to NASA in its efforts to build a lunar base, scientists believe plentiful quantities of ice below the surface could be utilised to provide occupants with access to water, oxygen and hydrogen.

Other contributing elements picked up by the LCROSS sensors included methane, ammonia, silver and even alcohol – though probably not enough to alleviate the sense of isolation and loneliness that living on the moon will surely create for its future inhabitants.

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