Chandrayaan-I data confirms ice deposits on Moon's polar regions, says NASA

Scientists have found frozen water deposits in the darkest and coldest parts of the Moon's polar regions using data from the Chandrayaan-I spacecraft, that was launched by India 10 years ago, NASA said today.

With enough ice sitting at the surface -- within the top few millimetres -- water would possibly be accessible as a resource for future expeditions to explore and even stay on the Moon, and potentially easier to access than the water detected beneath the Moon's surface.

The ice deposits are patchily distributed and could possibly be ancient, according to the study published in the journal PNAS.

At the southern pole, most of the ice is concentrated at lunar craters, while the northern pole's ice is more widely, but sparsely spread.

Scientists used data from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument to identify three specific signatures that definitively prove there is water ice at the surface of the Moon.

M3, aboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, launched in 2008 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), was uniquely equipped to confirm the presence of solid ice on the Moon.

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