Chandrayaan data reveals water on moon equator too
written by indianachu
at Saturday, March 6, 2010
SCIENTISTS had another eureka moment as water was found on the moon's equator.
New analysis of data from the moon mineralogy mapper ( M3) on board Chandrayaan- 1 shows water on the moon is not limited to its polar regions but extends to the equator.
" The new map shows water and hydroxyl ions detected by M3 is more extensive," US geologist Roger Clark and colleagues said at the ongoing 41st lunar and planetary science conference at Woodlands near Houston.
Last September, NASA and ISRO scientists had announced the discovery of water molecules in the polar regions of the moon. M3 had also revealed hydroxyl, a molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom, in the lunar soil.
Data from instruments on board two NASA spacecraft, Cassini and Deep Impact , had also shown the presence of water and hydroxyl trapped or absorbed in the minerals on the lunar surface. It corroborated the initial M3 find.
However, there was a problem. While the other spacecraft indicated the presence of water closer to the equator, the M3 data failed to show that.
Scientists said the main reason for the mismatch was conservative processing of the M3 data.
Scientists also found that M3 had not completely covered certain wavelengths that denote the presence of water. So, they constructed a new map on the basis of finer data and it now confirms what Cassini and Deep Impact had indicated there is water close to the equator of the moon too.
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