No Ice at the Lunar Poles | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference: "No Ice at the Lunar Poles

Using the 70-centimeter (cm)-wavelength radar system at the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Arecibo Observatory, Puerto Rico, the research group sent signals deeper into the lunar polar surface -- more than five meters (about 5.5 yards) -- than ever before at this spatial resolution. 'If there is ice at the poles, the only way left to test it is to go there directly and melt a small volume around the dust and look for water with a mass spectrometer,' says Bruce Campbell of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian Institution.
Campbell is the lead author of an article, 'Long-Wavelength Radar Probing of the Lunar Poles,' in the Nov. 13, 2003, issue of the journal Nature . His collaborators on the latest radar probe of the moon were Donald Campbell, professor of astronomy at Cornell University; J.F. Chandler of Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory; and Alice Hine, Mike Nolan and Phil Perillat of the Arecibo Observatory, which is managed by the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center at Cornell for the NSF. "