Context:
Recently, NASA launched the Lunar Trailblazer satellite to map water deposits on the moon, focusing on permanently shadowed regions ( PSR) near the poles.
- This mission aims to identify potential resources for future lunar missions and understand the moon’s water, potentially shedding light on Earth’s water history.
About the Lunar Trailblazer mission
- The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) spacecraft will measure water levels to study climate change, and sea level rise, and help improve disaster preparedness, including floods and droughts.
- SWOT will collect about 1 terabyte of data daily and cover Earth’s surface from 78°S to 78°N latitude at least once every 21 days.
- It uses the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) to measure water height with high precision across two 30-mile-wide swaths at a time.
- It will provide crucial data on freshwater bodies, including lakes larger than 15 acres and rivers wider than 330 feet.
Discovery of Water on the Moon
- Scientists have suspected water on the Moon for a long time, but exact amounts and locations have been debated.
- The first definitive discovery of water came in 2008 when ISRO’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft detected ice in the Moon’s polar craters.
- In 2009, NASA’s LCROSS mission confirmed water in the Moon’s south pole after crashing into a dark crater.
- The Moon’s poles contain over 600 billion kilograms of water ice and Micro-cold traps inside craters may increase this estimate by 10-20%.
- Water ice is found in permanently shadowed regions at the Moon’s poles, as observed by Chandrayaan-1’s M3 instrument.
Importance of Lunar Water
- Water ice on the Moon can be used for drinking water for astronauts and lunar habitats.
- It can be converted into oxygen for breathable air.
- The hydrogen from the water can be used to produce rocket fuel for lunar missions and transportation.
- Water ice could support lunar industries by providing essential resources for various processes.
- Harvesting Moon water reduces the need to transport resources from Earth, making lunar exploration more sustainable.
Challenges in Exploring the Moon’s Water Ice
- Precise landing in the lunar poles is challenging due to rocky and sloped terrain.
- Extreme cold temperatures in PSRs require spacecraft capable of surviving these conditions.
- Power and communication issues arise as rovers in PSR lose line-of-sight with Earth and require advanced energy sources.
About Chandrayan-1
- India’s Chandrayaan-1 played a crucial role in the discovery of water molecules on the Moon.
- Launch Vehicle: PSLV-XL
- Chandrayaan-1 was India’s first deep space mission.
- Among its suite of instruments, it carried NASA’s Moon Minerology Mapper (M3), an imaging spectrometer helped confirm the discovery of water locked in minerals on the Moon.
- The orbiter also released an impactor that was deliberately crashed into the Moon, releasing debris that was analyzed by the orbiting spacecraft’s science instruments.