Water on the Moon?

No, the recent discovery was the result of studying the data from the M3 instrument. It's only later that they took a look at data from Cassini, etc and re-interpreted them in light of the new data.

Prior to the M3 data, nobody had realized Cassini saw water on the Moon. They even said so in their press conference. Give credit where it's due.

What about the possiblity of water on Mercury? It gets more solar wind, so if water is formed from solar hydrogen reacting with rock...

Hmmm.... how many volatiles could be implanted on Mercury by the solar wind?

one of the conclusions from this study (if you read the paper on the M3 data where they announce the discovery) is that the same process should occur on all airless bodies. so yes mercury should have water. as to other volatiles, it is extremely unlikely that anything else could be formed via the same method. the only reason you get water/hydroxyl is because most rocks have a lot of oxygen in them. rocks generally don't have nitrogen, carbon, etc so it is very implausible that ammonia or methane or similar would form.

HST can be used for lunar viewing, but it doesn't have sufficient resolution at the necessary 'shutter speeds' to image Apollo hardware. HST is in fact part of the observation plan for the LCROSS impact.

http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov

So when will we send a lander to mars to see exactly how much water there is? Is there one being planned?

there's a lot of water on mars, i think we have a pretty good idea from the orbital satellites exactly how much there is. the real question is whether there are organic molecules in the places where there used to be liquid water. mars science laboratory or whatever that mission is called now should have the capability to detect them too.

In other words, the question is now, how easy will it be to get at the water?

no we know it's easy to get at. we have direct observations of near-100% pure ice in some relatively new martian impact craters, as well as know of ice deposits at the poles, water in the atmosphere, and even observed frost forming in the soil near phoenix. so the question is what else OTHER than water there is.

I'm sorry, I said mars. I meant the moon (Earth's moon, that is). Will sending a lander help there?

Now you know the next step is to colonize the moon. It is more feasible then ever with a large quantity of hydrogen.