Washington:
The world's search for water on the moon has taken a giant step forward with a first-of-its kind experiment by NASA. The American space agency successfully crashed two space crafts one after the other on the south pole of the moon, in a search for hidden ice.
Instruments from the trailing craft confirm that a large empty rocket barrelled into the moon at 5 pm, followed four minutes later by a probe with cameras taking pictures of the first crash, and gathering signatures of water.
But the big live public splash NASA had hoped for didn't quite happen. Screens got blurred and no immediate pictures of the crash or the large plume of lunar dust were seen.
The idea was to confirm the theory that water, a key resource if humans are ever going to go back to the moon, is hidden below the barren moonscape.
Recently the Indian lunar mission Chandrayaan had returned images that water was found on the moon as a thin invisible film. Till the scientific analysis is completed, the mystery of water on the moon remains largely unsolved.