Express news service
Sep 25, 2009
Days after the Chandrayaan-I mission to the moon had to be aborted prematurely, US space agency NASA tonight said India’s maiden lunar mission had confirmed the presence of water molecules in the polar region of moon’s surface. Indian Space Research Organisation’s chairman G Madhavan Nair called the finding “path breaking”.
NASA said data from its Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3, one of the 11 payloads aboard the Chandrayaan-I spacecraft, had revealed water molecules in “amounts that are greater than predicted, but still relatively small”. It said the instrument had also found traces of hydroxyl, a molecule containing one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom, in the lunar soil.
“Water ice on the moon has been something of a holy grail for lunar scientists for a very long time,” said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This surprising finding has come about through the ingenuity, perseverance and international cooperation between NASA and the India Space Research Organisation”.
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