Ice Found in Moon Crater by NASA Spacecraft

In a statement this week, NASA announced that its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has detected ice in a crater on the surface of the moon. In fact, according to the data which the team has received, the as much as 22 percent of the surface material found in a crater, known as Shackleton crater, on the moon’s south pole appears to be ice.

To identify the ice, the team used the laser light from LRO’s laser altimeter and found the crater’s floor is brighter than those of other nearby craters. The finding is consistent with the presence of small amounts of ice and was published this week in the Thursday edition of the journal Nature.

“The brightness measurements have been puzzling us since two summers ago,” said Gregory Neumann of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., a co-author on the paper. “While the distribution of brightness was not exactly what we had expected, practically every measurement related to ice and other volatile compounds on the moon is surprising, given the cosmically cold temperatures inside its polar craters.”

The team was also pleased to find the Shackleton crater, named after the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, to be in a remarkable state of preservation. Two miles deep and over 12 miles wide, Shackleton interior is totally hidden from the sun and in that cold darkness has remained relatively unscathed since its formation more than three billion years ago.