Since ice reflects radar (radio light waves) differently than solid rock, mapping the surface of something with radar (essentially shining radio waves at it and measuring the reflection) it is an effective way of finding water ice - and a little less destructive then smashing some big thing into the Moon and looking at the resultant dust plume. NASA built such a radar instrument for India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft called Mini-SAR instrument, which apparently for more than 40 small craters with water ice. Cool! Go here to read a nice summary of all the different pieces of evidence for water on the Moon.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
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