From The Times
September 24, 2009
Indias lunar mission finds evidence of water on the Moon
The Moon
Jeremy Page in Delhi
Dreams of establishing a manned Moon base could become reality within two decades after Indias first lunar mission found evidence of large quantities of water on its surface.
Data from Chandrayaan-1 also suggests that water is still being formed on the Moon. Scientists said the breakthrough to be announced by Nasa at a press conference today would change the face of lunar exploration.
The discovery is a significant boost for India in its space race against China. Dr Mylswamy Annadurai, the missions project director at the Indian Space Research Organisation in Bangalore, said: Its very satisfying.
The search for water was one of the missions main objectives, but it was a surprise nonetheless, scientists said.The unmanned craft was equipped with Nasas Moon Mineralogy Mapper, designed specifically to search for water by picking up the electromagnetic radiation emitted by minerals. The M3 also made the unexpected discovery that water may still be forming on the surface of the Moon, according to scientists familiar with the mission.
Its very satisfying, said Dr Mylswamy Annadurai, the project director of Chandrayaan-1 at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Bangalore. This was one of the main objectives of Chandrayaan-1, to find evidence of water on the Moon, he told The Times.
Dr Annadurai would not provide any further details before a news conference at Nasa today from Dr Carle Pieters, a planetary geologist of Brown University who oversaw the M3.
Dr Pieters has not spoken about her results so far and was not available for comment last night, according to colleagues at Brown University. But her results are expected to cause a sensation, and to set the agenda for lunar exploration in the next decade.
They will also provide a significant boost for India as it tries to catch up with China in what many see as a 21st-century space race. This will create a considerable stir. It was wholly unexpected, said one scientist also involved in Chandrayaan-1. People thought that Chandrayaan was just lagging behind the rest but the science thats coming out, its going to be agenda-setting.
Scientists have long hoped that astronauts could be based on the Moon and use water found there to drink, extract oxygen to breathe and use hydrogen as fuel.
Several studies havesuggested that there could be ice in the craters around the Moons poles, but scientists have been unable to confirm the suspicions.
The M3, an imaging spectrometer, was designed to search for water by detecting the electromagnetic radiation given off by different minerals on and just below the surface of the Moon. Unlike previous lunar spectrometers, it was sensitive enough to detect the presence of small amounts of water.
M3 was one of two Nasa instruments among 11 pieces of equipment from around the world on Chandrayaan-1, which was launched into orbit around the Moon in October last year. ISRO lost control of Chandrayaan-1 last month, and aborted the mission ahead of schedule, but not before M3 and the other instruments had beamed data back to Earth.
Another lunar scientist familiar with the findings said: This is the most exciting breakthrough in at least a decade. And it will probably change the face of lunar exploration for the next decade.
Scientists are eagerly awaiting the results of two American unmanned lunar missions, which were both launched in June, that could also prove the existence of water on the Moon.
Early results from Nasas Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) recorded temperatures as low as -238C (minus 396.4F) in polar craters on the Moon, according to the journal Nature. That makes them the coldest recorded spots in the solar system, even colder than the surface of Pluto, and could mean that ice has been trapped for billions of years, the journal said. The LRO has also detected an abundance of hydrogen, thought to be a key indicator of ice, at the poles.
The other Nasa mission, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), is due to crash a probe into a polar crater on October 9 in the hope of sending up a plume of ice that can be examined by telescope.
We are on the verge of a renaissance in our thinking about the poles of the Moon, including how water ice gets there, Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator for LCROSS, said in Nature.
Big bang
? The Moon is 4.6 billion years old, about the same age as the Earth
? It is thought to have formed from a giant dust cloud caused when a rogue planet collided with the Earth
? It is 238,000 miles from the Earth
? Gravity on the Moon is a sixth of that on Earth
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There was a lot of speculation about it yesterday in the Indian media but apparently US had put an embargo on any communication in this regard saying that it will be all declared in a major announcement.
I, and others, thought that it was just the local media going overboard but it has just been announced that it was (apparently) pretty much all true!
Printed from
Did Chandrayaan find water on Moonâs surface?
Srinivas Laxman, TNN 23 September 2009, 03:02am IST
MUMBAI: Did Indiaâs maiden Moon mission Chandrayaan-1 find water on the lunar surface before the project was aborted? There were indications on Tuesday that it had. An announcement about a ââmajor discoveryââ made by Chandrayaan-I is expected on Thursday, and the buzz is that this could be about water on the Moon.
If true, credit for this much-awaited discovery, however, could go to Nasaâs Moon Minerology Mapper (M3), one of the payloads on board Chandrayaan. The Rs 386-crore craft was launched on October 22 last year and terminated on August 30 following a communication failure. One of the missionâs main goals was to sniff for water.
For now, neither Isro nor Nasa is speaking about the discovery. An announcement is expected at a media interaction scheduled for Thursday at the Nasa headquarters in Washington DC featuring well-known lunar scientist Carle Pieters from Brown University. She is the principal investigator for M3. Efforts by TOI to call Pieters failed.
A spokesman for Brown University also declined comment, saying there was an embargo. "It will be a major announcement of a major discovery and is something great for Chandrayaan. It will mark a major leap for Indiaâs space programme," he said.
An Isro official at Sriharikota also confirmed that a major announcement was expected on Thursday. ââI too have heard something to that effect. Nothing more,ââ he said.
If the discovery of water proves true, then it could trigger another round of Moon missions, and start serious hunt for life in outer space. India has not ruled out the possibility of a manned lunar flight.
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BBC NEWS
Spacecraft see 'damp' Moon soils
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News
We are rediscovering the enigmas of the Moon and they're really in our own backyard
Dr Jim Garvin, Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center
A surprising amount of water has been found to exist in the Moon's soil.
Data from three spacecraft, including India's Chandrayaan probe, shows that very fine films of H2O coat the particles that make up the lunar dirt.
The quantity is tiny but could become a useful resource for astronauts wishing to live on the Moon, scientists say.
"If you had a cubic metre of lunar soil, you could squeeze it and get out a litre of water," explained US moon researcher Larry Taylor.
The rock and soil samples returned by the Apollo missions were found to be ever so slightly "damp" when examined in the laboratory, but scientists could never rule out the possibility that the water in the samples got in only after they were hauled back to Earth.
The only safe scientific conclusion they could draw at the time was that the lunar surface was all but bone dry.
Now a remote sensing instrument on Chandrayaan-1, India's first mission to lunar orbit, has confirmed that there is a real H2O signal at the Moon.
Two other satellites to look at the Moon - the US Deep Impact probe and the US-European Cassini spacecraft - back up Chandrayaan.
Both collected their Moon data long before Chandrayaan was even launched (in the case of Cassini, 10 years ago), but the significance of what they saw is only now being realised.
Indian success
The quantity of water is seen to increase the closer the observations are made to the poles - the very places the Apollo missions never went.
Scientists suspect the water is created in the soil in an interaction with the solar wind, the fast-moving stream of particles that constantly billows away from the Sun.
Harsh space radiation triggers a chemical reaction in which oxygen atoms already in the soil acquire hydrogen nuclei to make water molecules and the simpler hydrogen-oxygen (OH) molecule.
The amounts are small, say researchers, but boost the notion that astronauts based on the Moon could use it as a resource.
"If it is a little or a lot, it's easy enough to split into hydrogen and oxygen and then you have rocket fuel," said Professor Taylor, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, researcher who has worked on the Chandrayaan data.
The Indian Moon mission was launched late last year but radio communication with it was abruptly lost in August. Nevertheless, the Indian space agency (Isro) will consider the water discovery a major triumph and a vindication of its endeavours.
A US space agency (Nasa) probe is due to impact the Cabeus A crater near the Moon's south pole next month to see if it can kick up sufficient soil so that another satellite and Earth-based telescopes can detect the presence of water vapour in the dusty plume.
Researchers say the latest results, published by the journal Science, give them confidence that the experiment performed by the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission, known as LCROSS, could have a positive outcome.
They speculate that the water seen elsewhere on the lunar surface may migrate to the slightly cooler poles, much as water vapour on Earth will condense on a cold surface.
This cold sink effect could result in vast quantities of water being retained in permanently shadowed craters in the form of ice, especially if it has being supplemented by water delivered by comets.
'Exciting place'
Nasa's Lunar Prospector probe in the late 1990s saw a strong hydrogen signal at high north and south latitudes. Some scientists on the mission suggested there could be up to 300 million tonnes of water-ice buried in crater soils that never see sunlight.
Chandrayaan made its observations using a US-provided instrument, the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3 for short.
The M3 assessed the nature of lunar soils by analysing the way that light from the Sun was reflected off the surface.
It could only see the top few centimetres of soil. Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is currently circling the Moon, has the capability to see down to nearly a metre. Its data could determine if the presence of water is much more extensive.
Dr Jim Garvin is the the chief scientist at the US space agency's Goddard Space Flight Center.
He was asked if he thought the Moon had become an exciting place again for science.
"I think it always was; it's just we saw this big exciting Solar System and after touching the Moon with six human missions, we moved on - to Mars, to the outer planets, to comets and asteroids.
"And now we are rediscovering the enigmas of the Moon and they're really in our own backyard. They're tantalisingly close," he told BBC News.
Interestingly enough, I saw (and read) the article by NYTimes on the news soon after it was (apparently unofficially) leaked but it was removed within a few minutes (after my reading it) perhaps in anticipation of and/or NASA's insistence on the wait till the official conference on Friday is held.
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A German Soldier doesnt die, he goes to hell and regroups !
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Thunder i couldn't resit either... (Login sampaix) Elite WAFF Vet Club
Re: The Breaking News: So It is really true!!
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September 24 2009, 4:32 PM
Dreams of establishing a manned Moon base could become reality within two decades after Germany first lunar mission found evidence of large quantities of beer on its surface.
= A pathological liar is someone who often embellishes his or her stories in a way that he or she believes will impress people.
= In psychology, mythomania (also known as pseudologia fantastica or pathological lying) is a condition involving compulsive lying by a person with no obvious motivation.
http://www.bushywood.com/mythomania.htm
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Well, India/Germany/France-specific comments aside, this is a really big deal - for a whole bunch of reasons.
As a kid, I remember seeing tapes of Apollo astronauts on the moon's surface freaking out when they found orange sand and later being disappointed when it came to pass that it wasn't actually caused by rusting of metal in the lunar soil.
[IMG][/IMG]
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\\Congrats to NASA, they made the instrument and found the water evidence from the data the instrument collected.\\
Its like saying congrats to my fingers for feeding me without mentioning the connections your fingers has to your hand and your hand has to your mind and body.
The Moon mineralogy mapper instrument (NASA) was supplemented by Hyper Spectral Imager instrument (ISRO), High energy x-ray spectrometer (ISRO) and Lunar Laser ranging instrument (ISRO) in search of water and minerals.
no wonder,
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India's own Moon Impact Probe (MIP) on board the country's maiden lunar craft had discovered water on the moon, a finding confirmed by US
space agency NASA's probe that was also aboard Chandrayaan-1, India's top space scientist G Madhavan Nair said here on Friday.
India's first lunar mission had made a "path-breaking and real discovery" by establishing the presence of water on the moon, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman Nair said.
The jealous chicom panda gets pwned again. Must be the fact that change, the lunar orbiter could not find anything worthwhile..
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Tu hai nadee o bekhabar
Beh chal kahin ud chal kahin
Dil khush jahan teri toh manzil hai wahin.
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"One of the main objectives of Chandrayaan-1 was to look for the presence of water. Our MIP confirmed it."
these were chandrayaan-1 indian objectives. no mentioning of searching for water...now, suddently ISRO's guy saying their probe main objectives was to look for water..LOL..can you smell BULL SH!T
The stated scientific objectives of the mission were:[20]
* To design, develop, launch and orbit a spacecraft around the Moon using an Indian-made launch vehicle.
* Conduct scientific experiments using instruments on the spacecraft which would yield the following data:
o Preparation of a three-dimensional atlas (with high spatial and altitude resolution of 5-10 m) of both the near and far side of the Moon.
o Chemical and mineralogical mapping of the entire lunar surface at high spatial resolution, mapping particularly the chemical elements magnesium, aluminium, silicon, calcium, iron, titanium, radon, uranium, & thorium.
o To increase the scientific knowledge
o The impact of a sub-satellite (Moon Impact Probe MIP) on the surface on the Moon as a fore-runner to future soft-landing missions.
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This message has been edited by nb1300 on Sep 25, 2009 11:36 AM This message has been edited by nb1300 on Sep 25, 2009 9:35 AM
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Chemical and mineralogical mapping of the entire lunar surface
News just in...water is a chemical. They don't call it H20 for nothing..
HAHA!
==================================
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Tu hai nadee o bekhabar
Beh chal kahin ud chal kahin
Dil khush jahan teri toh manzil hai wahin.
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don't be silly indian MIP did not have specific equipment that designed to detect water, that were the job of NASA equipments and costs $110 million more than all indian 5 instruments + ESA combined.
chandrayaan-1(idian instruments) only carries basic chemical detection sensors same as other probes that had been to the moon..that's why water is not in the particular list chemical elements...and now suddenly it's was their main goal..lol
"o Chemical and mineralogical mapping of the entire lunar surface at high spatial resolution, mapping particularly the chemical elements magnesium, aluminium, silicon, calcium, iron, titanium, radon, uranium, & thorium."
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This message has been edited by nb1300 on Sep 25, 2009 11:35 AM This message has been edited by nb1300 on Sep 25, 2009 10:32 AM This message has been edited by nb1300 on Sep 25, 2009 10:31 AM This message has been edited by nb1300 on Sep 25, 2009 10:30 AM This message has been edited by nb1300 on Sep 25, 2009 10:30 AM This message has been edited by nb1300 on Sep 25, 2009 10:27 AM This message has been edited by nb1300 on Sep 25, 2009 10:27 AM
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Chandrayaan-1, Indias first mission to Moon, was launched with the prime objective of finding traces of water on the lunar surface besides mapping minerals and chemicals on the Moon. Towards this, a host of sophisticated instruments were included in Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, like Moon Impact Probe (MIP) and Hyper-Spectral Imager (HySI) from ISRO
The analysis of the huge volume of M3 data was carried out by a joint team of scientists from US and India. The lead role was taken up by Dr.Carle Pieters, Principal Investigator from Brown University, USA and Prof. J N Goswami, Principal Scientist, Chandrayaan-1 from Physical Research Laboratory of India`s Department of Space. The findings were published in Sciencexpress in its September 24, 2009 edition.
==================================
Tu dhoop hain jham se bikhar
Tu hai nadee o bekhabar
Beh chal kahin ud chal kahin
Dil khush jahan teri toh manzil hai wahin.
This message has been edited by w00tness on Sep 25, 2009 10:54 AM
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Oh look, the chinganzee trying desperately to clutch at whatever straws he can find..lol
The five Indian instruments are the Terrain Mapping Camera, the Hyper-Spectral Imager, the Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument, the High-Energy X-ray Spectrometer and the Moon Impact Probe.
the Hyper-Spectral Imager took colour pictures by recording the visible and infra-red light reflected from the moon.
The High-Energy X-ray Spectrometer explored the moons polar regions for possible presence of water-ice.
This was in August. So we now know that there were 2 instruments that were engaged in detecting the presence of water on the moon.
Your ownage here is complete, chinaman. Now be a good boy and make me dimsum!
==================================
Tu dhoop hain jham se bikhar
Tu hai nadee o bekhabar
Beh chal kahin ud chal kahin
Dil khush jahan teri toh manzil hai wahin.
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"This was in August. So we now know that there were 2 instruments that were engaged in detecting the presence of water on the moon.
Your ownage here is complete, chinaman. Now be a good boy and make me dimsum!"
i've already said it. those are just basic instruments..not like NASA..check japanese probe, chinese probe, european...etc..they all carried those and were actually more powerful lol......that's why you dont see water/h20 mentioning in ISRO's objectives, while all other chemicals are in the list...lol how can that be? when your main goal was to look for water..
--
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Son, stop embarassing yourself. I've given you links and you've given me typical jealous chinaman crap...just accept that chandrayaan had a MAJOR role to play in this discovery!
Is that so hard for you, lol!
==================================
Tu dhoop hain jham se bikhar
Tu hai nadee o bekhabar
Beh chal kahin ud chal kahin
Dil khush jahan teri toh manzil hai wahin.
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why did NASA didn't allow indians to talk about the discovery? if its india's discovery than why did the NASA guys tell you to shut the hell up till they make an announcement themselves?
""why did NASA didn't allow indians to talk about the discovery? if its india's discovery than why did the NASA guys tell you to shut the hell up till they make an announcement themselves?""
The Moon Impact Probe on Chandrayaan-I appears to have sensed water earlier than Nasa's Moon Minerolgy Mapper (M3) but protocol did not allow ISRO to declare the discovery. While MIP detected water molecules on November 14, 2008, just 22 days after Chandrayaan-1's launch, M3 did so in March 2009.
J S Goswami, principal investigator for Chandrayaan-1, told TOI: ``We had indications of water on November 14, the day MIP crash-landed on the Moon. It sensed some sort of water molecules. We were absolutely delighted but it had to be corroborated. Without international examination and cross-examination and confirmation of the evidence, it would not have been right on our part to go public about it.''
Mylswami Annadurai, project director, Chandrayaan-1 and 2, explained why India did not go public with the discovery. ``International protocol requires us to discuss the evidence, cross-calibrate it with experts and it goes through a peer review and gets their approval. After all this, if it's a credible finding comes the go-ahead for its publication. This process can take three to four months, sometimes even seven. Only after publication can we speak about the evidence.''
ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair said the MIP showed indications as it was crash-landing - it caught signatures of water. ``As the MIP was landing, it took some pictures that indicated the water molecules eventually found by M3.''
The MIP had picked up strong signals of water particles towards the polar region from 70 degree latitude to 80 degree latitude, according to Goswami. While this was known in November 2008, the M3 discovery of water in March 2009 was confirmed only three months later ^ in June. That's because US scientists wanted to be sure they had indeed found water and it took three months of rigorous cross-examination to confirm it. Publication after the confirmation also took time.
Officials said India scientists waited all this while to make the discovery public as they wanted the findings of such global significance to be first published in a scientific journal.
The end.
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Tu dhoop hain jham se bikhar
Tu hai nadee o bekhabar
Beh chal kahin ud chal kahin
Dil khush jahan teri toh manzil hai wahin.
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Bump, just to revel in the ownage I've laid upon nb1300 and the porkies.
==================================
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Tu hai nadee o bekhabar
Beh chal kahin ud chal kahin
Dil khush jahan teri toh manzil hai wahin.
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