A "significant amount" of water ice exist on the moon, the U.S. space agency said Friday it announced a leap forward in space exploration and raise hopes of a permanent lunar base.

Preliminary data from a probe of the moon shows the mission succeeded exposed water in a permanently shaded crater, "NASA said in a statement."This discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon," it added, as scientists celebrated the landmark discovery ecstasy.

The data was taken after NASA sent two spacecraft crashed into the lunar service last month in a dramatic experiment to investigate the nearest neighbor to the ground water.One rocket hit Cabeus crater near the lunar south pole, around 5600 miles (9,000 km) per hour.

The impact sent a huge cloud of billowing material from the crater, which has not seen the sun for billions of years.The rocket was followed four minutes later with a spacecraft equipped with cameras to record the impact.

"We're ecstatic," said Anthony Colaprete, the project scientist and principal investigator of $ 79 million LCROSS mission.

"Several lines of evidence indicate water was present in both high plume of steam and the angle of the ejecta curtain created by the impact of LCROSS Centaur.

"The concentration and distribution of water and other substances that require further analysis, but it is safe to say Cabeus the water," said Colaprete.

Researchers had previously theorized that with the exception of the possibility of ice on the bottom of craters, the moon was completely dry.Finding water in the Earth's natural satellite is a major advance in space exploration.

"We're unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbor, and by extension, the solar system," said Michael Wargo, chief scientist of the moon at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

"A thorough understanding of the LCROSS data may take some time. The rich data," said Colaprete.

"Along with water in Cabeus, there are exciting hints of other substances. Permanently shaded regions of the moon is really cold traps, collecting and preserving material billions of years."

Only 12 men, all Americans have always been on the moon, and the last to set foot there in 1972, at the end of the Apollo missions.But NASA's ambitious plans to put U.S. astronauts back to the moon in 2020 to establish manned lunar base for further exploration of Mars as part of the Constellation project is increasingly questioned.

NASA's budget is currently too small to pay for the Orion capsule, a more sophisticated and comprehensive overview of the Apollo lunar module and the Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles to bring the spacecraft into orbit.

A number of review panel appointed by President Barack Obama said that existing budgets are not large enough to finance a return mission in 2020.