L cross

NASA has announced that it found a "significant amount" of water on the moon as a result of the LCROSS impact last month.

LCROSS is a spectacular mission will attempt to determine if water ice occurs in areas of permanent shadow near the lunar poles.

The LCROSS results give only an inkling of where the water might have come from.

Also surprising was the cornucopia of other elements and molecules that Lcross scooped out of the Cabeus crater, near the Moon's south pole.

The Lcross scientists said it was not clear how all the different readings of water related to one another, if at all.

The satellite, known as Lcross (pronounced L-cross), crashed into a crater near the Moon's south pole a month ago.

NASA televised live images of the LCROSS as it crashed into a crater near the moon's south pole.

With all this at stake, the team behind LCROSS hopes it can find water rather than just evidence of it.

The impact of LCROSS was monitored by a second probe, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

That flexible approach also meant that many of the usual, rigid frameworks that apply to space travel have been dropped for LCROSS.

Further analysis of LCROSS will show in what state the water exists and what other useful minerals are found at the impact site.

Explanation: This mid-infrared image was taken in the last minutes of the LCROSS flight mission to the Moon.

The science instruments onboard the LCROSS spacecraft cover an extremely wide spectrum.

The plumes of dust were collected and examined by the spectrometers onboard Lcross .

And just last week NASA announced that their LCROSS moon crashes had kicked up "significant" amounts of water from a crater.

Now, the LCROSS observations provide a handy explanation for the hydrogen: It's bound with oxygen to form water.

The crater that LCROSS carved out contained 341 pounds of water, and an estimated 5. 6 percent of the soils there could be moist.

The full understanding of the LCROSS data may take some time.

Above the crash site, LCROSS sensors directly will measure water ice, water vapor and other compounds.

A series of articles reporting the Lcross results appear in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

The LCROSS mission accomplishes this with two space vehicles.

But the latest LCROSS observations are different.

Lcross is focused specifically on water.

The full understanding of the LCROSS data may take some time, for the data is that rich.

Nobody saw the LCROSS debris plume because the probes struck a building which swallowed the effects of the explosion.

Five days after launch LCROSS and the attached Centaur will execute a fly-by of the Moon.

Two hours after launch LRO will separate from LCROSS and continue on its way to the Moon.