NASA radar detects ice crystals on moon

Washington, Mar 2: In a major finding by NASA, 40 ice-filled craters were detected in the moon's North Pole by scientist after using data from a NASA radar that flew aboard India's Chandrayaan-I.

More than 40 small craters with water ice were found on the NASA's Mini-SAR instrument, lightweight, synthetic aperture radar.

The sizes of the craters varied from 2 to 15 km in diameter.

Estimating nearly 600 million metric tons of water ice in the craters, NASA statemtent said that the finding would give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit.

"The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the moon," Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, said on Monday, Mar 1.

OneIndia News