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India knew about moon water last year
Updated On: 25 September, 2009 08:39 AM IST | | Nolan Pinto
The discovery of water on the moon may have been made public only now, but scientists at ISRO had got wind of it almost a year ago.
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The discovery of water on the moon may have been made public only now, but scientists at ISRO had got wind of it almost a year ago.
"The NASA scientists suspected it was water when they noticed a thermal signature of 3 micron wavelength.
They were confused and surprised at the same time," a highly placed ISRO source told MiD DAY.
The first signs were detected by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), a NASA-built instrument that came as a guest payload on Chandrayaan 1, when it was operated on November 18, 2008.
The data from the M3 which would change lunar exploration forever - was confirmed only after checking against data from two earlier missions who had detected similar signs: the Visual Infrared Mapping Spectrometer on the Cassini spacecraft and the High Resolution Infrared Imaging Spectrometer on the EPOXI spacecraft.
Though it was NASA scientists who interpreted the data, their Indian counterparts were clued in on the discovery from an early stage. However scientific procedure and a strict policy of confidentiality meant that the findings couldn't be revealed until they were confirmed, he added.u00a0
"The NASA scientists suspected it was water when they noticed a thermal signature of 3 micron wavelength.
They were confused and surprised at the same time," a highly placed ISRO source told MiD DAY.
The first signs were detected by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), a NASA-built instrument that came as a guest payload on Chandrayaan 1, when it was operated on November 18, 2008.
The data from the M3 which would change lunar exploration forever - was confirmed only after checking against data from two earlier missions who had detected similar signs: the Visual Infrared Mapping Spectrometer on the Cassini spacecraft and the High Resolution Infrared Imaging Spectrometer on the EPOXI spacecraft.
Though it was NASA scientists who interpreted the data, their Indian counterparts were clued in on the discovery from an early stage. However scientific procedure and a strict policy of confidentiality meant that the findings couldn't be revealed until they were confirmed, he added.u00a0
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Not so dry: These images show a very young lunar crater on the side of the moon that faces away from Earth, as viewed by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space Research Organisation's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. Read Next Story Trending StoriesLatest Photos |
