Enlarge / This image consists of six photographs taken from the Apollo 14 Lunar Module, enhanced and stitched into a single panorama to show the landing scene, along with the location from where Alan Shepard hit two golf balls. Both astronaut's PLSS' (life-support backpacks) can also be seen at left. (credit: NASA / JSC / ASU / Andy Saunders )

Fifty years ago this week, NASA astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. made space history when he took a few golf swings on the Moon during the Apollo 14 mission , successfully hitting two golf balls across the lunar surface. Space enthusiasts have debated for decades just how far that second ball traveled. It seems we now have an answer , thanks to the efforts of imaging specialist Andy Saunders, who digitally enhanced archival images from that mission and used them to estimate the final resting spots of the golf balls.

Saunders, who has been working with the United States Golf Association (USGA) to commemorate Shepard's historical feat, announced his findings in a Twitter thread. Saunders concluded that the first golf ball Shepard hit traveled roughly 24 yards, while the second golf ball traveled 40 yards.

Shepard's fondness for cheeky irreverence had popped up occasionally during his successful pre-NASA naval career, most notably when he was a test pilot at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. He was nearly court-martialed for looping the Chesapeake Bay Bridge during a test flight, but fortunately, his superiors intervened. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1959, Shepard was selected as one of the seven Mercury astronauts. (The others were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, and Deke Slayton.)

Enlarge / And the day that was comes to a close at NASA's Stennis Space Center after the SLS rocket fired up for the Green Run test on January 16, 2021. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

Nearly two years ago, then Vice President Mike Pence delivered the most consequential space policy speech of his tenure in office. During a National Space Council meeting at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, Pence laid out the Trump administration's plans to land humans on the Moon by the year 2024.

"We must redouble our efforts here in Huntsville and throughout this program," said Pence, speaking to engineers leading development of NASA's Space Launch System rocket. "We must accelerate the SLS program to meet this objective. But know this: The President has directed NASA and Administrator Jim Bridenstine to accomplish this goal by any means necessary."

At the time, NASA engineers at Marshall told Pence they were confident the SLS rocket would make its debut flight in 2020, setting up a schedule to allow astronauts to return to the Moon by 2024. Even so, Pence maintained he was not committed to any single rocket, or contractor. The Moon was the goal—not the means of reaching it.

Enlarge / The instrument used to detect the water flies on a 747. (credit: NASA/Jim Ross )

Despite its proximity to a very blue planet, the Earth's Moon appeared to be completely dry, with samples returned by the Apollo missions being nearly devoid of water. But in recent years, a number of studies have turned up what appears to be water in some locations on the Moon, although the evidence wasn't always decisive.

Today, NASA is announcing that it has used an airborne observatory to spot clear indications of water in unexpected places. But the water may be in a form that makes accessing it much harder. Separately, an analysis of spots where water could be easier to reach indicates that there's more potential reservoirs than we'd previously suspected.

Up in the air

With no atmosphere and low gravity, the Moon can't hang on to water on its surface. The first time that sunlight heats lunar water up, it will form a vapor and eventually escape into space. But there are regions on the Moon, primarily near the poles, that are permanently shadowed. There, temperatures remain perpetually low, and ice can survive indefinitely. And, to test this possibility, NASA crashed some hardware into a shady area near the Moon's south pole and found water vapor amidst the debris.