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“Mission strikes Gold” the Associated Press,(AP), wrote on Saturday. I couldn’t find better title to describe NASA new discovery announced on Friday. NASA scientists, ever so happy, reported that a lot of water was found on the moon, specifically near the lunar south pole.

Based on impacts made by a new satellite called “Lcross”, US space scientists confirmed India’s first mission Chandrayaan that there is water on the Moon. According to Anthony Colaprete, the principal investigator for US space agency NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite who held a news conference on Friday, “Plenty of water was found on the Moon.”

Lcross satellite has slammed into a crater near the Moon’s South Pole a month ago creating a hole 60 to 100-feet wide. Colaprete said that the impact crash kicked up about 25 gallons of water. “We got more than just whiff,” said Peter H Schultz, a professor of geological sciences at Brown University and a co-investigator of the mission. “We practically tasted it with the impact.”

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), launched October 22, 2008,  had announced the path-breaking discovery of water on the moon by India’s Chandrayaan-1 on September 24 after data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument indicated the presence of water, however, the moon mission had to be aborted on August 30 after Chandrayaan lost radio contact with the Earth.

During the conference, NASA scientists explained that Lcross mission consisted of two pieces, an empty rocket stage to carve into the lunar surface and a small spacecraft to measure what was kicked up once it slammed into the surface. On October 9 the twin impacts create a plume of material from the bottom of a crater that has not seen sunlight in billions of years, NASA said. Furthermore, “the plume travelled at a high angle beyond the rim of Cabeus and into sunlight, while an additional curtain of debris was ejected more laterally.” NASA explained.

Chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington “Micheal Wargo”, and LCROSS project scientist investigator “Anthony Colaprete” in California expressed their joy about the discovery saying that they are about “to unlock the mysteries of the Earth nearest neighbor and, additionally to the entire Solar System.”

This image provided Friday, Nov. 13, 2009 by NASA shows the ejecta plume created by the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket about 20 seconds after after impact Oct. 9, 2009. It turns out there’s plenty of water on the moon- at least near the lunar south pole, scientists said Friday. (AP Photo/NASA)