Chandrayaan-1 results indicate that water on the Moon was formed by electrons from Earth
According to the study, which was published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the electrons may have helped water develop on the lunar body.
Scientists have discovered that high energy electrons from the Earth may be producing water on the Moon by analyzing the remote sensing data from India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission.
The detection of water molecules on the Moon was made possible by Chandrayaan-1. (Representative of ISRO on Twitter)
The study, which was lead by scientists from the University of Hawai’i (UH) at Manoa in the US, found that these electrons in Earth’s plasma sheet are assisting in weathering processes on the Moon’s surface, which include the breakdown or dissolution of rocks and minerals.
According to the study, which was published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the electrons may have helped water develop on the lunar body.
To comprehend the Moon’s genesis and development as well as to provide water supplies for future human exploration, the researchers said it is essential to grasp the Moon’s water concentrations and distributions.
They said that the new discovery could also assist in explaining the formation of the water ice previously found in the Moon’s permanently shadowed areas.
The detection of water molecules on the Moon was made possible by Chandrayaan-1. The Chandrayaan program’s first Indian lunar probe, the mission was launched in 2008.
One of the main ways that water is believed to have created on the Moon is via the solar wind, which is supposed to be made of high energy particles like protons and bombards the lunar surface.
The scientists looked at how the Moon’s surface weathering changed when it passed through Earth’s magnetotail, which almost entirely shelters the moon from solar wind but not from photons from the Sun.
According to Shuai Li, an assistant researcher at the UH Manoa School of Ocean, “this offers a natural laboratory for studying the formation processes of lunar surface water.”
The Moon is subjected to solar wind bombardment while it is outside the magnetotail. “Water formation was predicted to drop to almost zero inside the magnetotail because there are hardly any solar wind protons there,” Li added.
Li and co-authors examined the remote sensing information gathered between 2008 and 2009 by the imaging spectrometer Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument on India’s Chandrayaan 1 spacecraft.
They carefully evaluated how water creation changed when the Moon passed through the plasma sheet and magnetotail of Earth.
Li said, “To my amazement, the remote sensing data revealed that the water production in the Earth’s magnetotail is virtually similar to the period when the Moon was outside of the Earth’s magnetotail.
This suggests that there could be new water sources or other creation processes in the magnetotail that aren’t directly related to the implantation of solar wind protons. In particular, radiation from high-energy electrons has characteristics that are comparable to those of the protons in the solar wind, he said.
The researchers said that this discovery and the group’s earlier investigation of rusted lunar poles show that the Earth and Moon are closely connected in numerous previously unrecognized ways.
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched Chandrayaan 1 in October 2008, and it remained in operation until August 2009. An impactor and an orbiter were part of the mission.
Last month, India became the first nation to successfully deploy a lander and a rover on the Moon’s mysterious south pole on board the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
