NASA recently reconfirmed its 2009 assertion on the presence of water on Moon’s surface by using new data from the M3 (Moon Mineralogy Mapper).
Notably, the instrument had been sent to space on India’s Chandrayan –I and has thus far provided ample evidence of water on Moon.
What is the recent news?
M3 was sent to space through India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in 2008 and data from it has been subjected to rigorous study worldwide.
Recently, NASA had stated that new data from its M3 instrument has reconfirmed presence of water (solid ice) in moon without any ambiguity.
NASA’s M3’s could differentiate between solid, liquid and vapour ice, and its data indicated that solid ice was patchily deposited on the moon’s surface.
It collected data that not only picked up the reflective properties of water molecules but also the distinctiveness in reflections by different water states.
Most of the newfound water ice lies in the shadows of craters near the poles, where the warmest temperatures never reach above -250°F (-150°C).
Notably, because of the very small tilt of the Moon’s rotation axis, sunlight never reaches these regions.
What are the other studies that confirmed water on moon?
Confirmation - In September 2009, an analytical study of data from NASA’s “M3 instrument” on board ISRO’s Chandrayan - I spacecraft was published.
This announced the “unambiguous evidence” of presence of water across the lunar surface, which was done after reconfirmation by NASA’s EXPOXI craft.
Notably, NASA’s EPOXI spacecraft passed by the Moon on its way to comet Hartley 2, and its data was corroborated with M3’s.
This was further verified by reassessing the data produced by a spectrometer aboard Cassini spacecraft in 1999.
The data from ISRO’s hyper-spectral imager, an instrument used for mapping minerals, also aboard Chandrayaan-1, supplemented the evidence.
This is the final confirmation of water on Moon, something that had been hypothesised since the first lunar missions in the 1960s.
Subsequently - Another of ISRO’s instruments on Chandrayaan-1, the Moon Impact Probe (MIP), had produced compelling evidence of water on the Moon.
Notably, MIP, a 35-kg cube-shaped instrument with the Tricolour on all sides, is the first Indian object to land on the Moon.
After 2009, several studies have pointed to the presence of water, in different forms although most of these have used the same data sets as used in 2009.
In August 2013, scientists looked at the same M3 data and detected magmatic water (that originates within the Moon’s interior), on the lunar surface.
How is water distributed on the lunar surface?
While water molecules were found mostly in the polar regions of the Moon, a 2017 study showed that water was present across the lunar surface.
Interestingly, the 2017 study also produced the first map of water distribution on the lunar surface using the M3 data set.
In February 2018, NASA reported data from two lunar missions that presented fresh evidence of water being “widely distributed” across the surface.
It said the water appeared to be present on the lunar surface abundantly, although it is not necessarily easily accessible.
