[X] My Assistant

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

There's a real interesting paper by Donald B. Campbell et al. entitled "No evidence for thick deposits of ice at the lunar south pole," which is being published in the October 19, 2006, issue of Nature. See the Editor's Summary for a synopsis and links.

See also a related Space.com story and a EurekAlert press release.

[dvandorn]

A tiny bit of the water at the lunar poles might well already have been transported there from Earth. Hundreds of pounds of water were released by Apollo vehicles and equipment, both on the surface and in lunar orbit. The LM, for example, cooled its systems using ice-encased sublimators. The PLSS backpacks the astronauts wore were also cooled using ice sublimation. Heck, a water seal leak on Apollo 15 resulted in the wholesale dumping of about 30 liters of water onto the surface.

While most of that water was likely lost to space and has been pushed out to the far ends of the solar system by solar winds by now, a little of it must have migrated to the always-cold portions of the lunar poles.

So, just a little tiny bit of the polar water has already been imported...

-the other Doug