Current Event #2

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33109285/ns/technology_and_science-space/

This article is about how the discovery of small amounts of water across much of the lunar surface has the U.S. space agency pursuing technologies that will allow us to mine water on the moon. This water could be used on future space explorations and would provide oxygen and fuel for lunar missions. Some methods they have discovered to mine this water include a hydrogen reduction plant, lunar rover prospectors, and microwave technologies. A study conducted by NASA Ames research center in California suggests that these technologies could pay for themeselves within a year, because we would be saving money by using the water to refuel space payloads in orbit around the moon. Despite this exciting revelation however, Gerald Sanders, manager of NASA's In-Situ Resource Utilization Project, states that big unknowns must be conquered before NASA engineers can move forward with the plan to prospect for lunar water. They will need to find out how much water the moon holds, where it is, and how deep down it is under the surface.
I chose this article because space exploration has always interested me and it's amazing to see how far we've come, techonology-wise, since we first started sending things into space. I think that the ability to collect water from the moon would be very benificial to future space explorations and would cut costs for space voyages significantly, by being able to resupply fuel and oxygen in orbit. Although water discovery and extraction from the moon has been talked about for along time, I believe that the creation of new technologies to facilitate the extraction are bringing NASA's visions of human colonies and future space exploration to the forefront.