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♪ I was strolling on the moon one day ♪
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♪ In a merry,
merry month of December, no May ♪
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♪ When much to my surprise,
a pair of moony eyes ♪
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Jack Schmitt's career as a singer
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was never destined to go very far.
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But his career as a
geologist took him further
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than any scientist before him.
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Schmitt was the first,
and still is the only scientist,
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to set foot on the moon.
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During their extensive
moonwalks in December 1972,
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Jack Schmitt and Gene Cernan collected
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a treasure trove of rock
samples that would keep
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geologists back on Earth busy for years.
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But the answer to one question eluded them.
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Would they find evidence
of water in the lunar dust?
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Because if they did, we could split it
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into its component
elements to make the most
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powerful rocket fuel known to man.
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And our moon would become
an invaluable gas station
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in the sky for future spacefarers.
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(intense music)
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In the late 1950's, and early 1960's,
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orbiters and landers from
both the United States
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and the Soviet Union
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became regular visitors to the moon.
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Surveying the surface,
and sampling the lunar landscape.
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From 1969 to 1972,
the Apollo program managed to place
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12 humans on the moon and
bring them back alive.
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Together, they returned to Earth
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with a total of 382 kilograms.
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That's almost half a ton, of moonrock.
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But even given all this activity,
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most of the surface of the
moon remained unexplored.
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And what was learned from
those brief forays across
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the magnificent desolation of the
moon, was limited.
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We've landed in six spots.
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{\an8}All those six spots were within
25 degrees of the equator.
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{\an8}And we learned quite a bit about the moon.
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We learned what its basic
chemical composition is,
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we learned how it works,
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what geological processes have shaped it
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what its history is,
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what its evolution has been over the past
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four and a half billion years.
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So we have a pretty good
understanding of that.
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And we made a rather startling
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discovery in the last 20 years,
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that we don't know everything
that we thought we did.
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That the poles are a unique environment.
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And the reason they're
unique is because of the way
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the moon's spin axis is oriented.
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The Earth's axis of rotation
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is significantly tilted
in relation to the plane
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of its orbit around the sun.
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A full 23.4 degrees.
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That's what gives us our seasons,
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and it's why, when it's summer
in the northern hemisphere,
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it's winter in the south.
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But the moon's axis of rotation
is hardly tilted at all,
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with respect to its plane around the sun.
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A skimpy 1.5 degrees.
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And that creates some rather unique
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conditions at the moon's poles.
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What that means is, if I'm an observer
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standing at the pole,
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I always see the sun
at or near the horizon.
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Now if I'm on a peak,
I will actually stick up into
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the sunlight,
I'll see the sun all the time.
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But conversely if I'm in a
hole, I'll never see the sun.
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So that simple relation of the spin axis
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and the sun is responsible for creating
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a unique environment at the poles.
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The areas that are in permanent
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darkness are extremely cold.
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If any kind of water
molecule gets into them,
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it can never get out again.
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There's no known process to remove it.
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Then the moon is bombarded
by water bearing objects,
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and has been for its entire history.
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There's water in commentary cores,
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there's water in meteorite minerals,
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there's water in interplanetary dust.
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So those water and hydrogen bearing species
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hit the moon constantly.
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And most of that's lost to space.
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But the stuff that hits the moon and finds
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its way into a cold trap, is trapped.
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That's why they're called cold traps.
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And so the thought was,
well, maybe there's an
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appreciable amount of
water ice in these craters.
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And we didn't really know.
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And all of the Apollo missions were sent
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in equatorial orbit so we didn't have
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the instruments needed to look into those
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dark areas and see what was there.
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So it wasn't until 20 years after Apollo,
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in 1994, the Clementine
mission orbited the moon
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for 71 days and mapped the moon globally.
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And we improvised an
experiment with Clementine.
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Used radio waves to
bounce them off the floors
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of the dark craters and look for ice.
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And we finally concluded
that we did see evidence
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for ice reflection in the
radio waves sent by Clementine.
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Now that set off a 20 year set of missions
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from a variety of countries.
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There was a lunar prospector mission
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that NASA sent in 1998,
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there was the SMART-1 mission in the early
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2000's sent by the European space agency,
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the Japanese sent Kaguya, lunar orbiter,
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the Chinese have had two lunar orbiters,
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India sent an orbiter, Chandrayaan-1,
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and the Americans sent the
lunar reconnaissance orbiter.
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All of them carried a varitey
of instruments using different
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techniques to look and map
the dark areas of the moon.
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All of them found evidence for substantial
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quantities of water there.
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We finally proved it, without a doubt,
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through the impact of
something called the LCROSS.
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And it was the upper stage of a rocket
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that was slammed into the moon.
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And then we looked at the ejecta thrown
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out by the impact of that rocket.
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And what we found was
that water vapor and water
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ice particles were thrown
out by that impact.
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The amount of water turned out to be
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between five and 10% of
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the total amount of ejecta.
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Doesn't sound like a lot,
but that actually is quite a bit,
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considering that most
people thought the moon
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had virtually no water at all.
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So we know that there's water there,
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what we don't know is what
its detailed properties are.
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And that's what we need to
find out before we go back.
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The presence of plentiful,
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accessible water on the moon
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may be the single most
important unanswered question
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underpinning any decision to return.
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Such major questions, and there are many
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in the realm of space science,
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are known as strategic knowledge gaps.
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There are two aspects to understanding
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the SKG's, the strategic knowledge gaps.
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You want to know how
the ice is distributed,
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and what its configuration is
and its physical properties,
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because you want to
know where it came from.
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You want to know its origin,
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you want to know it's evolution,
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you want to know the geologic scientific
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story behind the water.
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The other aspect of it is
the utilitarian value of it.
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I want to harvest that water,
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I want to use that water for a variety
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of different useful products.
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But before I can do that,
I need to know where it is,
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I need to know what its physical state is,
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I need to know how to get to it,
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and I need to devise a
technique that allows
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me to extract it from where it is.
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So the strategic knowledge
gaps reflect our ignorance,
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they reflect the amount of
things that we don't know
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about the ice that we
need to know before we can
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actually start using it
for practical purposes.
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It's like mining on Earth.
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Step one is prospecting.
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You take aerial photos,
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you look at pictures from satellites,
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and you look for regions of interest.
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That looks really interesting,
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I'm gonna to go send a prospector there.
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And that person's gonna go and he's gonna
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pick up rocks and take samples.
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So step one really is doing that.
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{\an8}And then from that point,
we'll hopefully be able
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{\an8}to set up some kind of a mining operation.
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Here again starting out small.
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We're not gonna churn out commercial
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quantities of these things.
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We have to test our techniques.
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Verify all the operations.
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Let it run for a period of
time, see if it breaks.
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If it breaks, I learned something.
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What kind of maintenance do I need?
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From that I can build a business case.
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Okay, now I know where the resource is,
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I know how difficult or
how easy it is to extract,
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I've demonstrated these things.
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Now can I scale it up?
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And so over time,
that's kinda what I hope to see.
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Is, we do this first step, prospect.
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If it identifies economically
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viable quantities of water,
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then that will trigger a new space race,
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that some observers are
calling the next Gold Rush.
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