Zeenews Bureau
Bangalore/New York: Despite coming to an abrupt end, India’s maiden moon mission Chandrayaan-1 might have put an end to the question of existence of water on moon.
Speculations are rife that Chandrayaan-1 found a “lot of water” on moon. An announcement to this effect is expected to be made at a press conference on Thursday.
A report by the online space news portal, Space Ref, says this discovery, made by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) on board the Indian mission, will be the subject of a press conference, to be addressed by Carle Pieters, planetary geologist and principal investigator of the instrument, at the NASA headquarters on Thursday. Incidentally, finding water on moon was one of the goals of the mission.
The Moon Mineralogy Mapper was on board the Chandrayaan-1 along with 11 other instruments and its objective was to provide the first mineral map of the entire lunar surface.
Hinting at this exciting development, a recent report published by Nature News says: “Results soon to be published… will show detailed spectra confirming that, indeed, the polar regions of the moon are chockfull of water-altered minerals.”
Chandryaan-1 was launched on October 22, 2008. Though it was supposed to have a life span of two years, it was abruptly terminated on August 30 after the radio link to the craft was lost.
For now, both ISRO and NASA have refused to reveal anything.
