According to the paper published by PNAS, M3 was able to pick up the reflective properties you'd expect from ice at the moon's poles. It also measured the way the material's molecules absorb infrared light, which differs between liquid water and solid ice, ensuring that those deposits are actually frozen water. M3's data showed that those pockets of ice are sparsely distributed at the northern pole and more concentrated at the southern poles.

Those ice deposits most likely formed because temperatures at the moon's poles, which sunlight never hits, don't go above -250 degrees Fahrenheit. Before we can count on them to sustain future manned missions, though, we first have to confirm just how big and deep they are. As Angel Abbud-Madrid, Colorado School of Mines Center for Space Resources' director, told Business Insider, we need to send a rover to examine them. Unfortunately, NASA already cancelled the Resource Prospector, a rover that was supposed to look and dig for ice and other resources on the moon future manned bases could use. The agency will still send the vehicle's instruments aboard other landers, but that might delay discoveries that could've been made sooner if they were equipped on a single rover.

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