'Significant' water found on Moon

In September, data from three spacecraft, including India's Chandrayaan probe, showed that very fine films of H2O coat the particles that make up lunar soil.

Scientists behind that finding speculated that this water might migrate to the even cooler poles, much as water vapour on Earth will condense on a cold surface.

This cold sink effect could be supplementing any water delivered by comets, they said.

If cometary material did reside in places like Cabeus Crater it would be fascinating to examine it, commented Greg Delory, from the University of California, Berkeley.

"The surfaces in these permanently shadowed areas, such as the one LCROSS impacted, are very cold," he told reporters.

"That means that they tend to trap and keep things that encounter them - compounds, atoms and so forth. And so they act as record keepers over periods as long as several billion years. They have a story to tell about the history of the Moon and the Solar System."

LCROSS was launched by Nasa on 18 June as part of a double mission which included the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).

The latter, which continues to circle the Moon, measured a temperature of minus 230 Celsius at the base of Cabeus Crater.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8359744.stm