3 questions: Ben Weiss discusses what a wet moon might mean
Last week, NASA and other agencies announced results from instruments aboard three different spacecraft which all indicate that there is water present in the surface soil, or regolith, of the moon. Although the amount is very small, it is much more than had been predicted. Associate Professor of Planetary Sciences Benjamin Weiss discusses the implications of the new finding. Q: How surprising was the detection of water on the surface of the moon, especially in daylight regions? A: It was enormously surprising and exciting. The accepted wisdom has been that the moon is and has always been bone dry. Although water was identified in the Apollo samples, it was generally discounted as terrestrial contamination. The three studies last week, which involved spectroscopic data from three different spacecraft taken over a period of 10 years, showed that not only does the lunar soil apparently have up to 0.1 percent by...