In today’s Los Angeles Times, John Johnson Jr. reports the latest from NASA’s “moon crater creator” mission.  Of course, the goal of the $79 million Lunar Crater Obsevation and Sensing Satellite mission isn’t merely to see if we can hit the moon with a rocket – it’s intended to impact the moon so that we can see what lies underneath the dusty surface.  Scientists beliieve that there may be deposits of hydrogren and water that lie in craters near the Moon’s poles, where the Sun’s light hasn’t shone for billions of years.

It turns out that multiple instruments have picked up strong signatures of water from the October 9 impact of the mission’s Centaur rocket – about 25 gallons of water in the form of vapor and ice in a crater about 100 feet across.  So what does this mean?  This leads to the real possibility for manned moon colonies – science fiction stuff that’s looking more real.

According to the LA Times story,

“NASA’s plans, currently under review by the Obama administration, call for a return to the moon at the end of the next decade, and construction of a lunar base in which astronauts could live and work for months at a time.  The presence of large quantities of water would make that plan more practical, since water could be used for drinking, breathing and even making rocket fuel.”

And based upon these scientific results, Anthony Colaprete, chief scientist of the mission, declared, “The moon is alive.”  Very cool stuff…