Exploring the moon is one of man’s obsessions and therefore one of the main goals of everyone participating in the space race. We have been on the satellite in question countless times, but most of the time we have limited ourselves to observing the surface with cameras. And when we talk about the moon, there has been something that has been particularly attractive to us for some time: its south pole, which only India has been able to reach so far.
NASA has been trying to study the south pole of the moon for a long time, and for this reason the new images shared by the agency have gone around the world. Thanks to the combination of an orbital camera in operation since 2009 and NASA’s ShadowCam instrument, launched in 2022 on a KARI (Korea Aerospace Research Institute) spacecraft, here is a mosaic view of Shackleton Crater in the moon’s south pole.
What is at the south pole of the moon?
This is undoubtedly the million dollar question. Because no one knows exactly what it is, but NASA is clear about what it could be: deposits of frozen water, something very common for people on Earth, but which could be a major advance if found on the planet lunar surface would be found. In space, water could have valuable uses, not only for drinking and staying put longer, but also for cooling equipment and even producing fuel and oxygen.
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