A surprising amount of water has been found to exist in the Moon's soil.

A surprising amount of water has been found to exist in the Moon's soil.

Data from three spacecraft, including India's Chandrayaan probe, shows that very fine films of H20 coat the particles that make up the lunar dirt.The quantity is tiny but could become a useful resource for astronauts wishing to live on the Moon, scientists say."If you had a cubic metre of lunar soil, you could squeeze it and get out a litre of water," explained US researcher Larry Taylor.

The rock and soil samples returned by the Apollo missions were found to be ever so slightly damp when examined in the laboratory, but scientists could never rule out the possibility that the moisture got into the samples on Earth.Now a remote sensing instrument on Chandrayaan-1, India's first mission to lunar orbit, has confirmed that the signal was real.Two other spacecraft to look at the Moon - Nasa's Deep Impact probe and the US-European Cassini satellite - back up Chandrayaan.