Chandrayaan 2 validates earlier finding of water on Moon
New Delhi : One of the major findings from Chandrayaan 1 was to find water on Moon, and a probe onboard India’s Chandrayaan-2 orbiter (second lunar mission) has validated the earlier findings.
According to scientists at ISRO, the findings from Chandrayaan 2 will help in drawing lunar water map, enabling better future missions.
Initial evidence for surface water came from the NASA-provided Moon Mineralogy Mapper(M3) experiment carried on Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. While this payload from NASA also detected evidence for water at lunar poles, its finding was under question, owing to the limited wavelength that M3(an imaging spectrometer) covered.
“With M3, we had reached the tip of the iceberg, but we needed double and triple confirmation. In a major breakthrough for us, the data from the old M3 sensor and the new Chandrayaan 2 sensor have matched. The orbiter of Chandrayaan 2 has a 5 micron (wider spectrometer), hence it unambiguously confirms the findings of Chandrayaan-1” Dr Mylswamy Annadurai, Former Director of ISRO’s UR Rao Satellite Center told Zee Media.
He also mentioned that the seven year long Chandrayaan 2 mission has capabilities to create a moon terrain map that depicts the rocks, craters, ice deposits, water traces etc.
He mentioned that with a map of moon, India's future missions will be of more value.
“The spectrometer on Chandrayaan-2 has the ability to detect the presence of water(H2O) molecules and also Oxygen-Hydrogen atoms are held together as Hydroxide(OH). In the new spectrometer images, the dips on the graph are visible clearly, DR. A S Kiran Kumar, Former Chairman, ISRO, told Zee Media.
