Large quantities of water found on moon

1 cubic meter = 1 liter? Is that like 34 oz for every 3 cubic feet? That doesn't really sound like "large quantities" to me. But then again, it's a lot more than what we thought was there. ETA: My math is atrocious. Thank you Google Calc.

badastronomy.com has a small writeup http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/09/23/water-on-the-moon-kinda/#comments

Suprising, maybe theres other stuff we're missing too...

This is interesting, and it is encouraging for what we might find on Mars, should we ever have the budget to properly investigate.

How did the apollo missions miss this?? did they not take samples of the dust/dirt? Or were they too busy playing golf?

golf or lookin for water? i guess they chose golf.

I'd personally love some golf on the moon

A liter is not what I'd call Large Quantities. But it's a start, I guess.

A cubic meter is about 35 cubic feet. A liter of water from that seems amazing to me. An average cubic meter of desert sand would hold a lot less I think. And given that the Moon is 3,475 kilometers in diameter, that would make the surface area about 3.8 to the 13th power meters square. So even if we assume a half meter deep moon dust, that comes out to 19 trillion liters of water on the Moon, or 5 trillion gallons. That may sound like a lot, but it is less then 10% of the water in Lake Tahoe or most other large lakes. Still that much water could fuel ion drive technology well into the 22nd ce... [More]

It's only what they have found so far... NASA finds ice on the moon and on Mars http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN2436167620090924