Today is holi. It’s festival of colors where people put colors to each other and play with water. People throw balloons filled with water to each other. Watching the people celebrate makes us feel there is lot of water on the earth. Water is vital for survival. A question arises is there water on the moon?
Yes, there is water on the moon. But not like we have here on earth. On the moon, water is found all over the surface. Water is mainly found as ice and not pools of liquid water. Some places have more waters than others. At the poles of the Moon there are areas where sunlight cannot go. And the places are extremely cold. These are called permanently shadowed regions and there could be lot of ice inside them. The ice shades inside these regions may be mixed with lunar soil buried deep below the surface.
Outside these extremely cold places is much less water but there is still water. Surfaces of the Moon do not see sunlight experience extreme temperature changes of 300 Celsius. This makes water to evaporate. Thus, there is no water like here on earth. This means if you have a handful of sand and you spread sand out so far no grain touches one another. An individual grain represents a single molecule of water. The sunlit moon has 100 times less water than Sahara Desert. But the poles of the Moon may contain tons of ice.
In coming future astronauts may be able to harvest water and use it for drinkable. Harvesting this water is critical components of future human deep space exploration. A question rises can water can be harvested so that astronauts can play holi on Moon as well? With this finding it makes us wonder.