Today NASA held a press conference revealing that by combining calibration sightings of a comet watcher called Deep Impact and the data aquired by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper riding a hundred kilometer orbit over the moon on the Chandrayan India based lunar mission. I watched the press conference on TV and am basing this note on what I remember from that conference without using any more sources. Somewhere on the site www.nasa.gov one can doubltless get the most up to date data. Probably some of it will correct errors in my summary below.
A Frank Summary of Moon Water Issue
1. The general surface of the Moon remains drier than any Earthly desert.
2. There is water difuse and spread over the whole surface of the moon in rough terms. There is is a chaotic and broad pattern of water distribution.
3. There is a broad distribution of hydroxyl as well which is a different combination of hydrogen and water.
4. There is evidence in ejecta that hydroxyl and possibly subsurface deposits of water have been thrown up by impacts.
5. There is an average of between one liter and one gallon of water in every ton of typical surface regolith.
6. There may still be water in permanent shade, water in subterranean deposits of ice and remnants of meteoric or comet borne material that was not part of this surface distribution.
7. We now have a baseline above zero for water on the moon. It is much less than Martian conditions and very austere but it can be combined with other elements of water located. Together with other sources it increases the chances of successful futute lunar crater colonies above the worst case scenario.
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