Moon Water

[EL PIC]

Some TBD ( to be determined ) water frozen in craters and not evaporated by Sun can exist on the moon. So can some subsurface liquid water. But realistically.. how much water is on the moon ??
But if the recent projection on solid Oxygen in underneath surface is anywhere near reality (8 billion people for 100000 years) .. what would that estimate be if x amount is used also for Water production ??
I think someone saying the above projection is really reaching. We are assuming very high efficiency in mining Solid Water to harvest both breathable Oxygen and drinking water and it has not even been proven viable to my knowledge.

 

[billslugg]

What is "TBD"?

 

[EL PIC]

To Be Determined ! I don’t think they have real data on how much water on moon there is in any form (ice, liquid). Furthermore this Solid Oxygen boggles my mind and converting into breathing oxygen and drinkable water is further out.

 

[billslugg]

To Be Determined ! I don’t think they have real data on how much water on moon there is in any form (ice, liquid). Furthermore this Solid Oxygen boggles my mind and converting into breathing oxygen and drinkable water is further out.

Best data we have is from the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter Centaur upper stage impact near the South Pole of the Moon Oct 9, 2009. The debris plume was viewed by LCROSS instrument on LRO and determined the water content was 5.6%+/- 2.9%. A ton of lunar regolith would contain about a liter of water.

Analysis of lunar rocks brought back by Apollo astronauts found traces of water, only at the 1 part per billion level.

Water can be there from the initial formation of the Moon or perhaps from the solar wind which has hydrogen atoms impact the Moon's rock at high enough velocity to dislodge oxygen atoms from the oxides.

 

[JohnPi]

There are some updates in this research. All it began in 2000, when a number of missions including such companies in space as the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1, and NASA’s Cassini and Deep Impact detected hydration on the lunar surface – but these missions could not determine if the signals were OH or H2O.

As it was already mentioned, lunar rocks that Apollo astronauts had brought helped scientists found water molecules locked in glasses and minerals in the samples returned by the Apollo missions.

And, in 2019, data from the LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer) mission revealed that OH and/or H2O existed on the Moon, beyond the permanently shadowed regions, and is expelled through micrometeorite impacts.
And it is considered that the lunar poles have over 600 billion kilos of water ice.