“Two US spacecraft launched to the Moon today from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, on their way to hunt for water that scientists think exists at the lunar south pole. What the craft finds could have big ramifications for NASA’s plans to send astronauts to this part of the Moon in the coming years.

Lunar water could provide a resource for expanded lunar exploration, such as by supplying the raw ingredients for rocket fuel at Moon bases. Scientists have known since 2009 that such water exists, but they want to know much more about where it is and how much there is. The two new spacecraft ‘are going after really important pieces of that puzzle’, says Parvathy Prem, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.”

From Nature.