Though Chandrayaan-2 mission lander crash-landed on the lunar surface in 2019, its orbiter is deftly doing its job as one of its eight key scientific instruments has detected the “unambiguous presence of hydroxyl and water molecules” on the Moon’s surface. The findings will certainly give a heads-up to Isro, which has scheduled the launch of its next lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3, in 2022.
Indian researchers used the data obtained by the orbiter’s imaging infrared spectrometer (IIRS), meant to collect information from the Moon’s electromagnetic spectrum, to understand the lunar mineral composition. Three strips on the Moon’s surface were analysed by IIRS sensor for hydration presence. “The initial data analysis from IIRS clearly demonstrates the presence of widespread lunar hydration and unambiguous detection of OH and H2O (water) signatures on the Moon between 29 degrees north and 62 degrees north latitude,” said the findings of Indian researchers that were recently published in the Current Science journal. Plagioclase-rich rocks have been found to have higher OH or possibly H2O molecules when compared to mare regions, which were found to have dominance of OH at higher surface temperatures, it said.
The study, authored by scientists including former Isro chairman A S Kiran Kumar from Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS) in Dehradun, Ahmedabad-based Space Applications Centre, Bengaluru-based U R Rao Satellite Centre and the Isro, says the new discovery is “significant for future planetary exploration for resource utilisation”, as several international missions, both manned and unmanned, to the Moon are lined up in the next few years.
India’s first moon mission Chandrayaan-1, launched in 2008, had first confirmed the presence of water when an instrument on board it - Moon Mineralogy Mapper or M3 - belonging to Nasa’s JPL, first detected widely-distributed hydration signatures across the Moon’s surface using 3μm spectral response.
