Before NASA had even been given the direction to start a program to go back to the Moon, Dr. Paul Spudis was already looking for ways to get science done there. So, when researchers from India announced at a research conference in Hawaii in 2003 that they were planning to send their first ever robotic probe to orbit the Moon, he immediately went to them to ask if they would want to fly his radar system on their mission. They said yes and now Spudis, who is based at the Lunar Planetary Institute in Texas, has flown to India many times in the intervening five years to prepare his instrument for launch.

His most recent trip started Sunday and the highlight was certainly this morning, watching the Chandrayaan-1 mission successfully launch from the pad and heft the moon-bound payload up into the heavens.

The MiniSAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) instrument is designed to give take radar measurements of the ground at angles that will help clarify if permanently shadowed south pole craters have water ice trapped in them or not. If water does exist in large quantities at the lunar pole that could be a big aid to future workers and lunar base dwellers so scientists have been anxious to settle the debate on the question. Although no one method can give a definitive answer, the Chinese, Japanese and American lunar probes that are already at the moon or will soon be there each have a different type of measurement that they are taking that if they all corroborate each others stories would in aggregate provide a very compelling case for that there is in fact water ice in them there craters.

Odyssey Moon is also very interested in the lunar south pole and are planning our "MoonTwo" mission to land there.

I spoke to Dr. Spudis last week and asked him what the most conclusive method for determining if the material in the south pole craters is in fact water ice. "Go there and dig it up," he said.

Maybe we aught to baseline a shovel on that "MoonTwo" mission...

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