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Go to Google today and the search may already be filled out, under a special logo honoring NASA's discovery of significant water on the moon.

AP: Splash! NASA moon crash struck lots of water

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The lunar dud for space enthusiasts has become a watershed event for NASA.

Spacecraft that crashed into the moon last month kicked up a relatively small plume. But scientists have confirmed the debris contained water - 25 gallons of it - making lunar exploration exciting again.

Experts have long suspected there was water on the moon. So the thrilling discovery announced Friday sent a ripple of hope for a future astronaut outpost in a place that has always seemed barren and inhospitable.

"We found water. And we didn't find just a little bit. We found a significant amount," Anthony Colaprete, lead scientist for the mission, told reporters as he held up a white water bucket for emphasis.

He said the 25 gallons of water the lunar crash kicked up was only what scientists could see from the plumes of the impact.

Science Now (The Moon Is Wet!) and Space.com (It's Official: Water Found on the Moon, Water Discovery Fuels Hope to Colonize the Moon) have the detailed stories.

The happiest guy out there is Peter Diamandis, Chairman & CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, who writes, Most Valuable Real Estate in the Solar System: Water on Lunar South Pole:

I'm particularly excited for all of the teams building vehicles for the Google Lunar X PRIZE (www.googlelunarxprize.org/). This is a $30 million competition funded by Google and operated by the X PRIZE Foundation. We've offered up a large cash bounty for the first team to privately build and land a robot on the surface of the Moon that can travel, send back photos and video. Think of these vehicles as a low-cost 'prospector' looking for information and valuable data, as well as the companies constructing the shovels and picks on the bleeding edge of this potential boom.

Which may in part explain Google's enthusiasm over all this.

They're thrilled in Bangalore, too: Chandrayaan discovers magnet on moon

BANGALORE: After water, it's magnet . Chandrayaan-1 has discovered and confirmed for the first time the presence of magnetic spheres on the far side of the moon--the side we cannot see from the earth. This could theoretically mean a longer and secure stay for astronauts on moon.

There had been speculation for long but the confirmation was made by Sara, the instrument jointly made by Isro, European Space Agency and Sweden. The findings by Sara, not yet published, were made known by top scientists on the sidelines of the platinum jubilee celebrations of the Indian Academy of Sciences at IISC. The discovery of magnetic forces comes after the discovery of water molecules by M3--the Nasa instrument on Chandrayaan-1.

...The confirmation of micro-magnetic spheres has thrown open an exciting theoretical possibility--a safer stay for astronauts. It is believed that micro magnetic sphere resists or deflects radiation from solar winds hitting the moon's surface . In case bigger magnetic spheres could be built, astronauts could live within those spheres and survive the radiation.

 Tags  moon NASA

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