The Cassini spacecraft was launched in 1997 as a collaborative project between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), its mission was to study the planet Saturn and its surrounding system.
In the year 1999 Cassini did a flyby of the moon on its way to its final destination and during that period a major observation was made.
- A broad absorption of water was noticed with its spread at about 3 millimeters with around 2.8 millimeters of this absorption made up of hrdroxyl.
This observation was made possible by virtue of Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) and it proves solidly that water is present on the moon.
How Is Water On The Moon?
The issue of water being present on the moon is a touchy one and requires delicate study.
The reason for this is because of a common phenomenon which is Evaporation.
Unlike the planet earth, the moon has no magnetic field and no atmosphere, this alone indicates that there is no provision for the preservation of water (which evaporates relatively easily) on the surface of the moon.
If the moon does not have any capability or support for storing water, how then does water remain on its surface?
The answer to that as it appears is also quite straightforward, ice
(solid form of water as we all know it) is known to survive in a cold
environment without dissolving, the permanently shadowed craters at
the Moon's poles are cold environments and there have been
speculations that there's water stored in these areas.
The presence of water on the moon can be attributed to materials brought by travelling comets and asteroids.
The process of water forming on the moon starts with the reduction of Iron(II)oxide in lunar materials by hydrogen present in the solar wind.
Also it has been determined that a fraction of the water formed may be as a result of some water released from the moons interior over a period of a billion years.
A study published in 2017 indicates that there is a widespread distribution of lunar pyroclastic deposits on the lunar surface, the type of deposits whose existence depends on the presence of a significant amount of water in the lunar mantle.
The Apollo mission yielded several samples of lunar rocks which were subject to tests in the laboratory to determine the presence of water.
Traces and little amounts of water were found which led to the assumption that they were only there as a form of contamination from earth.
However information from Chandrayaan-1, Cassini(mentioned earlier) and NASA's Deep Impact Probe has spurred the scientists conducting the studies to think otherwise.
Chandrayaan-1 detected several wavelengths of light on the lunar surface that indicated the presence of a chemocal bond between hydrogen and oxygen.
The deep impact spacecraft on the other hand noticed the presence of water and hydroxyl on the lunar surface.
Conclusion
These various studies stand to prove that there is water present on the moon.
The presence of water on the moon could make living on the moon in the future world very easy since water is so integral to bio-existence.
From fulfilling the general purpose of drinking to serving as a raw material to hydrogen and oxygen for rocket propellers the inhabitants of earth stand to gain a lot from water being found on the lunar surface.
References
ftp://ftpcrustal.cr.usgs.gov/pub/KSmith/IMDP%20Products/Clark_water_on_moon_Science.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_water
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7fb0/0c574323969400ef3dd6e8a1f3db82d6e9db.pdf
https://www.space.com/7328-official-water-moon.html
https://www.universetoday.com/41392/water-on-the-moon-what-does-it-mean/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jillianscudder/2017/03/27/astroquizzical-water-moon/#679fa367f8df
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/water-moon-formed-volcanoes-glass-space-science/