24 September,2009 02:42 PM IST | | PTI
India's maiden moon mission Chandrayaan-I has detected evidence of water across the lunar surface, scientists announced on Thursday.
Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a NASA instrument onboard Chandrayaan-I, detected wavelengths of reflected light that would indicate a chemical bond between hydrogen and oxygen in materials on the thin layer of upper soil.
The Moon Mineralogy Mapper or M3 has confirmed existence of water on moon by analysing the data collected from Chandrayaan-I. The finding ends four-decade long speculation on whether there is water on moon.
Scientists first claimed that water existed on moon about 40 years ago after they analysed rock samples brought to earth as souvenirs by Apollo astronauts. But they had doubts about the findings as the boxes in which the moon rocks were brought to earth had leaked contaminating the samples with air from the atmosphere.
Scientists believe that the water could have been formed due to interaction of oxygen present in rocks and soil on moon with hydrogen in the form of protons emitted by the sun as a result of nuclear fusion.
As these protons hit the moon, they break apart oxygen bonds in soil materials, and where free oxygen and hydrogen are together, there's a high chance that trace amounts of water will be formed, said Larry Taylor from the University of Tennessee, who was among the M3 team of scientists.
The M3 instrument analysed how sunlight reflected off the lunar surface to identify water particles in which scientists observed elements of chemical bonding alike water. However, the instrument can only see the very uppermost layers of the lunar soil perhaps to a few centimeters below the surface. They studied the light that is reflected in different wavelengths of different minerals, and used those differences to know what is present in the thin layer of upper soil.
According to the scientists, it was water, previously theorised but not proven to exist only in permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles. Taylor and other M3 team members believe their findings will be of particular significance as mankind continues to plan for a return to the moon.
The lunar maps created by M3 could provide mission planners with prime locations for extraction of water from the lunar soil. The findings will be published in this week's online edition of Science Express journal.
Moon water traces finding by Chandrayaan-1 path-breaking: Nair
Describing as path-breaking the evidence of water on Moon by India's Chandrayaan-1 mission, ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair on Thursday said no lunar odyssey so far had given a positive conclusion.
"There is confirmation of traces of water. It is a path-breaking event as far as Chandrayaan-1 mission is concerned. It is very very significant. So far, no mission has confirmed the presence of water positively," he said.
One of the major instruments that gave the data was Moon Mineralogy Mapper of NASA, which was one of the payloads on board India's maiden Moon mission supplemented by hyper-spectral imager and moon impact probe of Indian Space Research Organisation.
The data analysis was done by scientists of Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the US and Physical Research Laboratory and Space Application Centre, both headquartered in Ahmedabad, he said.
Nair said ISRO would make a formal announcement and disclose detailed analysis tomorrow following the publication of findings in a science journal and announcement by NASA scientists.
Chandrayaan-1, launched in October last year, ended prematurely last month ahead of its two-year life span but Nair has maintained that it had achieved 95 per cent of its objectives.
