Going by the information put forth in four reports published in Friday's issue of the journal Science, there is clear evidence of water, most probably frozen, on the desert surfaces of both the Moon as well as Mars.

NASA researchers said on Thursday that the inference about existence of water on the moon's surface has been substantiated by data from a comet-bound NASA exploration, a robotic mission to Saturn, and NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.

Giving a new perspective to the scientists' earlier belief - that water ice resulting from effects of comets is trapped in the eternally-shadowed craters near the moon's polar areas -, the new data reveals the formation and dispersal of water molecules across broader areas, even in lunar daylight.

Commenting on the most recent findings, Carle Pieters of Brown University in Rhode Island said: "When we say 'water on the moon,' we are not talking about lakes, oceans or even puddles. Water on the moon means molecules of water and hydroxyl - hydrogen and oxygen - that interact with molecules of rock and dust specifically in the top millimeters of the moon's surface."

Meanwhile, one of the four reports pertains to NASA's statement that its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted ice, probably kicked up by the effects of meteors, at five new craters on Mars' surface.