Water On The Moon: LCROSS Kicks Ice!- Buckets of water found in Moon .

Space enthusiasts in California watched the mission live last month

Impact: This Nasa image shows the flash of light as the rocket struck the lunar surface last month. Scientists today revealed they found a 'significant' amount of water in the debris

This is the first image of the moon taken from the satellite on its approach last month. Two Nasa spacecraft then barrelled towards the moon at twice the speed of a bullet

Nasa has found 'a significant amount' of water inside a crater on the Moon in a discovery that could pave the way for the first manned lunar base.

The agency announced that last month's audacious attempt to smash two spacecraft into the Moon's rocky surface to find ice was a major success.

The £49million bombing raid threw up a mile-high plume of dust - which included chunks of ice locked away in a deep crater at the lunar south pole. The bottom of the crater had not seen sunlight for billions of years.

The revelation may bring closer the day when mankind creates a permanent lunar base, using the water buried in the rocks to drink and generate hydrogen fuel.

A spokesman for Nasa said last night: 'The discovery-opens a new chapter in our understanding of the Moon.'

There were fears that last month's experiment had failed when the collision of the two spacecraft failed to produce the expected six-mile-high cloud of dust. Live pictures relayed from the Moon showed no sign of an impact, even though the crafts crashed as planned.

But yesterday, Nasa experts who studied the data said instruments trained on the impact saw a significant amount of water vapour.

Dr Anthony Colaprete, from NASA's Ames Research Centre, said: 'Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit, we found a significant amount. We are ecstatic.'

Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at Nasa headquarters in Washington, added: 'We're unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbour and by extension the solar system.

'It turns out the moon harbours many secrets, and LCROSS has added a new layer to our understanding.'

The LCROSS mission, which took place on October 9, was watched by millions across the globe live on the internet.

One rocket slammed into the Cabeus crater, near the moon's southern pole, at around 5,600mph, and was followed four minutes later by a spacecraft equipped with cameras to record the impact.

Over the last decade, scientists have found some hints of underground ice on the moon's poles, but this is the best evidence yet.

The discovery is expected to have major implications for the future of lunar exploration, and a ready supply of water could facilitate lunar bases.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who in 1969 made his historic Apollo 11 moonwalk with Neil Armstrong, was pleased to hear the latest discovery, but still believes the U.S. should focus on colonizing Mars.

'People will overreact to this news and say, 'Let's have a water rush to the moon,"' Aldrin said. 'It doesn't justify that.'

Mission scientists said it would take more time to tease out what else was kicked up in the moon dust.

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NASA probes give moon a double smack

This image provided by NASA shows an image taken shortly after the Centaur rocket impacted the moon taken from the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite Friday morning Oct. 9, 2009.



This still image from the 1902 silent film "Le Voyage Dans La Lune", written and directed by Georges Méliès, shows "the man in the moon" with a bullet-shaped space capsule lodged in his eye. For as long as man has looked up, the moon has inspired romance, poetry and songs. Man also likes blowing things up. Now we get to do both



This still image from the 1902 silent film "Le Voyage Dans La Lune", written and directed by Georges Méliès, shows "the man in the moon" with a bullet-shaped space capsule lodged in his eye. For as long as man has looked up, the moon has inspired romance, poetry and songs. Man also likes blowing things up. Now we get to do both



NASA smacked two spacecraft into the lunar south pole Friday morning in a search for hidden ice. Instruments confirm that a large empty rocket hull barreled into the moon at 7:31 a.m., followed four minutes later by a probe with cameras taking pictures of the first crash.

But the big live public splash people anticipated didn't quite happen. Screens got fuzz and no immediate pictures of the crash or the six-mile plume of lunar dust that the mission was all about. The public, which followed the crashes on the Internet and at observatories, seemed puzzled.

NASA officials said their instruments were working, but live photos of the actual crash were missing. Some select photos should be ready by a 10 a.m. press conference, they said.

But so far all NASA had was "images on the way in," said NASA spokesman Grey Hautaluoma.

Expectations by the public for live plume video were probably too high and based on pre-crash animations, some of which were not by NASA, project manager Dan Andrews told The Associated Press Friday morning 80 minutes after impact.

The first and much bigger crash was supposed to hit with the force of 1.5 tons of TNT into crater Cabeus and create a mini-crater about half the size of an Olympic pool. The second crash was to be about one-third as strong.

The idea is to confirm the theory that water — a key resource if people are going to go back to the moon — is hidden below the barren moonscape.

The images were to come from the probe itself. The probe is LCROSS, short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and pronounced L-Cross. It had five cameras and four other pieces of equipment to look for ice or any form of water as it dove through the dust storm created by the empty hull.

Minutes before the first crash, NASA was riding high, reporting no trouble at the Ames Research Center in California, where the mission was being controlled.

"Everything is working so very well," NASA's Victoria Friedensen, a manager in NASA's exploration office, said minutes before the one-two smack.

"What matters for us is: What is the nature of the stuff that was kicked up going in?" Andrews said. "All nine instruments were working fine and we received good data."

Andrews said the science team is pouring through the information — including what are supposed to be good images from ground-based telescopes on Earth — to answer the big question: Is there some form of water under the moon's surface that was dislodged? It will probably be two weeks before scientists will be certain about the answer, he said.

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