National Aeronautics and Space Administration or Nasa’s moon mineralogy mapper or M3 instrument on board the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft found thin blanket of water on the moon.
While the abundances are not precisely known, as much as 1,000 water molecule parts-per-million could be in the lunar soil: harvesting one tonne of the top layer of the moon’s surface would yield as much as 32 ounces of water, according to scientists involved in the discovery, a statement from Brown University.
“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 that interact with molecules of rock and dust specifically in the top millimeters of the moon’s surface” Carle Pieters, principal investigator of the M3 instrument said in the statement.
Besides Chandrayaan-1, scientists also found evidence of water on the moon from two Nasa probes – Deep Impact and Cassini. The research from the three missions would be published in the journal Science on Friday.
Chandrayaan-1, India’s maiden deep space mission was terminated on 30 August, after is power systems failed and scientists lost contact with the spacecraft hovering over the moon. The mission, which ended in 10 months of its launch, had an objective to find water on the moon, besides identifying regions for an eventual human landing on the satellite.
Scientists have speculated that water molecules may migrate from non-polar regions of the moon to the poles, where they are stored as ice in ultra-frigid pockets of craters that never receive sunlight.
“If the water molecules are as mobile as we think they are — even a fraction of them — they provide a mechanism for getting water to those permanently shadowed craters,” Pieters said in the statement.
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