00:03The moon is quickly becoming the golden child of space exploration once again, with India
00:08recently landing and now conducting their Chandrayaan-3 mission there, and NASA is expected
00:13to send Artemis-2 along with a human crew there next year.
00:16However, the missions are largely there in search of water, hoping to eventually aid
00:21in the construction of a moon base and permanent settlement on its rocky surface.
00:25There's just one problem.
00:25A new analysis suggests there might not be as much water in the moon's craters as once
00:30expected.
00:31Researchers believe that because some of the deeper craters remain in total darkness most
00:35of the time, it was likely they also contain hidden reservoirs of ice, ice that could be
00:39harvested for use by humans who might live there and wouldn't vaporize away in the sun.
00:43However, according to the new study, which used new calculations about the moon's past,
00:47researchers found that it went through some drastic changes much more recently, meaning
00:51most of those craters are younger than 2.2 billion years old, and they likely aren't
00:55old enough to harbor ancient ice, with one of the researchers saying about it, quote,
01:00These findings change the prediction for where we would expect to find water ice on the moon,
01:03and it dramatically changes estimates for how much water there is on the moon.
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