May NASA Bring WATER from MOON ? & WHY?
What’s Been Found?
Very fine films of water on dust particles on lunar surface
How Much Water Is There?
1 tonne of top layer of Moon’s surface could yield 32 ounces of water
How Was It Seen?
Nasa’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper on board Chandrayaan detected water from electro magnetic radiation emanating from different minerals on and just below lunar surface
Why Is It A Big Deal?
Potentially, humans could live there. They could split water into oxygen (for breathing) and hydrogen (for rocket fuel). Also, there could be water in other planets too
Why Did Scientists Miss Water Earlier?
There were traces of moisture on rock samples brought back by other Apollo missions but scientists weren’t sure if the moisture was deposited after these were brought back ‘Comets could have deposited water on Moon’
Wellknown astrophysicist, S M Chitre, said water on the Moon found by Chandrayaan-1 could have been deposited by the comets several billion years ago. ‘‘The comets are like water carriers,’’ he told TOI.
Regarding the significance of the discovery, Chitre said that it will have far reaching consequences with regard to the human colonization of the Moon and future rocket launches from the lunar surface. ‘‘The real significance of this mission is that it surveyed the entire moon. Nasa’s Apollo manned missions between 1969 and 1972 did not find any water at all because they surveyed only a bare 25% of the lunar surface,’’ he said.
The US, Russia and China are exploring the possibility of building human habitats on the Moon after 2020. Space experts said that in this race, India cannot lag behind and Isro officials also have not ruled this out.
Pieters said findings from M3 reveal new questions about ‘‘where the water molecules come from and where they may be going’’.
Scientists have for long speculated that water molecules may migrate from nonpolar regions of the Moon to the poles, where they are stored as ice in ultra-frigid pockets of craters that never receive sunlight. If, indeed, the water molecules are mobile, there is then the possibility of getting water to the permanently shadowed craters.
The M3 team found water molecules and hydroxyl at diverse areas of the sunlit region of the Moon’s surface as well as at the Moon’s higher latitudes where it seemed more definitive in presence. The M3 discovery has been confirmed by data from two Nasa spacecrafts — the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) — on the Cassini spacecraft and High-Resolution Infrared Imaging Spectrometer on the EPOXI spacecraft.
Very fine films of water on dust particles on lunar surface
How Much Water Is There?
1 tonne of top layer of Moon’s surface could yield 32 ounces of water
How Was It Seen?
Nasa’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper on board Chandrayaan detected water from electro magnetic radiation emanating from different minerals on and just below lunar surface
Why Is It A Big Deal?
Potentially, humans could live there. They could split water into oxygen (for breathing) and hydrogen (for rocket fuel). Also, there could be water in other planets too
Why Did Scientists Miss Water Earlier?
There were traces of moisture on rock samples brought back by other Apollo missions but scientists weren’t sure if the moisture was deposited after these were brought back ‘Comets could have deposited water on Moon’
Wellknown astrophysicist, S M Chitre, said water on the Moon found by Chandrayaan-1 could have been deposited by the comets several billion years ago. ‘‘The comets are like water carriers,’’ he told TOI.
Regarding the significance of the discovery, Chitre said that it will have far reaching consequences with regard to the human colonization of the Moon and future rocket launches from the lunar surface. ‘‘The real significance of this mission is that it surveyed the entire moon. Nasa’s Apollo manned missions between 1969 and 1972 did not find any water at all because they surveyed only a bare 25% of the lunar surface,’’ he said.
The US, Russia and China are exploring the possibility of building human habitats on the Moon after 2020. Space experts said that in this race, India cannot lag behind and Isro officials also have not ruled this out.
Pieters said findings from M3 reveal new questions about ‘‘where the water molecules come from and where they may be going’’.
Scientists have for long speculated that water molecules may migrate from nonpolar regions of the Moon to the poles, where they are stored as ice in ultra-frigid pockets of craters that never receive sunlight. If, indeed, the water molecules are mobile, there is then the possibility of getting water to the permanently shadowed craters.
The M3 team found water molecules and hydroxyl at diverse areas of the sunlit region of the Moon’s surface as well as at the Moon’s higher latitudes where it seemed more definitive in presence. The M3 discovery has been confirmed by data from two Nasa spacecrafts — the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) — on the Cassini spacecraft and High-Resolution Infrared Imaging Spectrometer on the EPOXI spacecraft.
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