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Is there water on the Moon?

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NASA.

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We Asked a NASA Scientist.

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Actually, yes.

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But not like we experience here on Earth.

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On the Moon, water is found all over the surface,

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but it's mainly in the form of ice and not pools of liquid water.

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Some places have more water than others.

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At the poles of the Moon are areas that never receive any sunlight,

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and so they're extremely cold.

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We call these permanently shadowed regions,

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and there could be a lot of ice inside them.

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The ice inside these regions may be mixed in with the lunar soil,

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buried deep below the surface, or it could be a sheet of ice.

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Outside these extremely cold places is much less water, but it's still there.

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Surfaces on the Moon that do see sunlight experience

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extreme temperature changes of 300 Celsius.

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This makes it hard for water to survive on the sunlit Moon, but the water

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that does survive is unlike any water
we experience here on Earth.

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But what does that mean?

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Imagine you have a handful of sand and you spread the grains

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of sand out so far that no grain touches another grain.

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An individual grain of sand represents a single molecule of water.

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And this is what we observe on the sunlit surface of the Moon.

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The sunlit Moon, however, has 100 times
less water than the Sahara Desert,

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but the poles of the Moon may contain tons of ice.

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So, is there water on the Moon? Yes.

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And one day, future astronauts may be able to harvest this water

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and use it for drinkable water, breathable oxygen or rocket fuel

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to take us farther out into our solar system.