NASA's First Detailed Map of Lunar Water.

NASA's now-retired SOFIA telescope has produced a new map that covers over 230,000 square kilometres of the lunar surface, revealing an abundance of water trapped on the shady sides of mountains and in the shadowed parts of craters. This is the first detailed map of water on the Moon, and it will provide valuable information for future lunar missions, including the upcoming VIPER mission to the Moon. If the water discovered by SOFIA and investigated by VIPER is found to be a resource that we can easily extract, it could secure the future of sustained human presence on the Moon.