- A study carried out by Indian space scientists has found evidence of enhanced possibility of water ice occurrence in the polar craters of the Moon.
- It suggests that the amount of sub-surface ice in the first couple of metres is about five to eight times larger than the one on the surface in both poles.
| Missions related to finding water on Moon Chandrayaan-1 – Launched by ISRO in Oct 2008, it was India’s first mission to the Moon. The mission included an orbiter and an impactor. One of its major achievements was the discovery of widespread presence of water molecules in lunar soil with the help of Moon Mineralogy Mapper experiment.NASA’s Lunar Prospector mission – In the late 90s, this mission found extra hydrogen at the poles, and where there’s hydrogen, there might be water. This led to the LCROSS mission.LCROSS mission – The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission was designed to determine the type and amount of hydrogen that might be present just below the Moon’s polar regions. It found water – about 5% by weight.Lunar Ice Cube Mission – The mission will carry a NASA instrument called Broadband InfraRed Compact High-Resolution Exploration Spectrometer (BIRCHES) to investigate the distribution of water and other organic volatiles.Chandrayaan-2 – The Chandrayaan 2 orbiter’s instruments (e.g.: Dual-frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar instrument) intend to extend our knowledge of water on the Moon. They include an enhanced infrared spectrometer and an upgraded radar. |
The study confirms the hypothesis that the primary source of sub-surface water ice in the lunar poles is out-gassing during volcanism in the Imbrian period.
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