More than 40 ice-filled craters at the moon's north pole have been found by NASA scientists studying radar data from India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.

The water ice was discovered in craters ranging from 1 to 9 miles in diameter, said the researchers studying data from NASA's Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar. NASA estimates the discovery could involve at least 1.3 million pounds of water ice, although the amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater.

Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houstonv, said," The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the moon. The new discoveries show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought."

During the past year, the Mini-SAR mapped the moon's permanently shadowed polar craters that aren't visible from Earth. The radar uses the polarization properties of reflected radio waves to characterize surface properties. (With Inputs from Agencies)