Chandrayaan 2: India’s orbiter confirms discovery of first water on lunar surface

Chennai: One of the important findings of India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission was the detection of the presence of water on the surface of the Moon. A probe on India’s Chandrayaan-2 orbiter (the second lunar mission) has not only validated the success by its predecessor, but also paved the way for future lunar exploration. According to ISRO scientists associated with both the lunar projects, the data from Chandrayaan-2 will be used to create a lunar water map, which will further aid in the upcoming missions to the Moon.

The initial evidence of surface water comes from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) provided by NASA on the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. While this NASA payload also detected evidence of water at the lunar poles, its discovery was questioned, as the limited wavelength M3 (an imaging spectrometer) covered. The basic function of a spectrometer is to take the light (reflected from the surface) and provide a graph of the output. However, in the case of M3, its wavelength of 0.7 to 3 µm was not sufficient to detect and confirm water on the Moon.

“With M3, we had reached the tip of the iceberg, but we needed double and triple confirmation. In a big breakthrough for us, the data from the old M3 sensor and the new Chandrayaan 2 sensor has matched. Chandrayaan – The 2K orbiter has a 5 micron (broad spectrometer), so it clearly confirms the findings of Chandrayaan-1” Dr. Mylaswamy Annadurai, former director of ISRO’s UR Rao Satellite Centre, told Zee Media.

He said that, with its mission life of around 7 years, the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter (in lunar orbit since September 2019) has the capability to map the terrain of the Moon showing rocks, craters, ice deposits, traces of water etc. . Known as the ‘Moon Man’ of India, Dr Annadurai expressed the hope that such a lunar map would help the upcoming Indian lunar exploration missions and ultimately the larger global scientific community.

“The spectrometer on Chandrayaan-2 has the capability to detect the presence of water (H2O) molecules and oxygen-hydrogen atoms that are held together in the form of hydroxide (OH). In the new spectrometer images, the degradation is clearly visible on the graph, Dr. AS Kiran Kumar, former chairman of ISRO, told Zee Media.

According to them, the separation of wavelengths in the 3.1- and 3.2-μm region helped distinguish between water and hydroxide. Water is found in minerals and hydrates in the form of water molecules and hydroxides. He said ISRO’s orbiter can map almost the entire Moon (from its 100 km altitude orbit) and with repeated observations more data can be collected. This offers good prospects for scientific analysis and study, given that water (H2O) and hydroxide (OH) do not exist in isolation on the lunar surface. Water is usually found in molecule form, while hydroxides are found in minerals and hydrates as moisture.

India’s second lunar mission Chandrayaan-2 (launched in 2019) was only partially successful, as the lander ‘Vikram’ could not land on the Moon’s south pole as intended. Instead, the lander and rover housed in it crashed, thus denying an opportunity to conduct a short-lived, on-surface analysis. However, the orbiter which orbits the Moon at an altitude of 100 km and an estimated speed of 1 km/s continues to function and is expected to function for many more years. India’s first lunar probe Chandrayaan-1 was launched in 2008 and operated for almost a year before communication with the orbiter was lost.

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