The Moon is quickly becoming the golden child of space exploration once again, however the missions are largely there in search of water, hoping to eventually aid in the construction of a Moon base and permanent settlement on its rocky surface. And one of their primary theoretical sources might just be a dead end.
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00:00 The moon is quickly becoming the golden child of space exploration once again, with India
00:08 recently landing and now conducting their Chandrayaan 3 mission there, and NASA is expected
00:13 to send Artemis 2 along with a human crew there next year.
00:16 However, the missions are largely there in search of water, hoping to eventually aid
00:20 in the construction of a moon base and permanent settlement on its rocky surface.
00:24 There's just one problem.
00:25 A new analysis suggests there might not be as much water in the moon's craters as once
00:29 expected.
00:31 Researchers believe that because some of the deeper craters remain in total darkness most
00:34 of the time, it was likely they also contained hidden reservoirs of ice.
00:38 Ice that could be harvested for use by humans who might live there and wouldn't vaporize
00:42 away in the sun.
00:43 However, according to the new study, which used new calculations about the moon's past,
00:47 researchers found that it went through some drastic changes much more recently, meaning
00:51 most of those craters are younger than 2.2 billion years old, and they likely aren't
00:55 old enough to harbor ancient ice.
00:57 As one of the researchers saying about it, "These findings change the prediction for
01:01 where we would expect to find water ice on the moon, and it dramatically changes estimates
01:05 for how much water there is on the moon."
01:08 -Erik Kyle, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology.