The conventional wisdom, at least since Apollo, was that the Moon is a dead, sterile world, unchanging. That was one reason that people have not been back to the Moon since Apollo 17 departed in 1972.
A series of discoveries, though, have changed everything we thought about the Moon. The New Moon (not the movie about vampires by the same name) has to be the greatest scientific story of 2009, if not of the decade.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter found indications of hydrogen in the permanently cold and dark regions of lunar South Pole craters. Then the Indian lunar probe, the Chandrayaan-1, found microscopic traces of water in lunar topsoil, where it no one expected to find it.
Then came the discovery that is being hailed as being the equivalent of finding gold in California. When the LCROSS impacted the lunar surface in the middle of Crater Cabeus, it set up a geyser of water and other material, some of which may be volatiles such as nitrogen and carbon. Lunar scientist Paul Spudis poetically declared that a “rainbow on the Moon” had been created.
With the presence of water and perhaps other useful material confirmed, the exploration and the settlement of the Moon got easier.
It is often said that if God wanted us to explore space, he would have provided a large Moon to go to nearby. Now it seems that there seems to be a second clause to that: If God really wanted us to explore space, he would have put water on that Moon.
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