Chandrayaan-1 brought back clinching evidence of a wet moon, and now NASA is trying to confirm presence of water ice on the lunar pole. This is the most expensive search for water till date.

Finding water on the moon is important if ever the moon has to be colonized. Two US spacecraft will crash one after the other on the moon in search for water.

The spacecrafts will be travelling at twice the speed of a bullet. An empty rocket that weighs 2.2 tons will hit the crater Cabeus and create a minicrater about half the size of an Olympic pool.

Trailing behind the rocket is the lunar probe Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which will beam back live images. The whole mission will cost $ 500 million.

The dust plume can be viewed through ordinary telescopes.

Indian scientists will observe the lunar deris cloud from Mount Abu. The scientific results of the experiment will be available later.

Earlier, two spacecrafts Chang'e-1 from China and Kaguya from Japan had also crash landed on the moon.