NASA said on friday that the LCROSS which was intentionally crashed into the moon has given another best evidence for water on the moon.
“We are ecstatic,” said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “Multiple lines of evidence show water was present in both the high angle vapor plume and the ejecta curtain created by the LCROSS Centaur impact. The concentration and distribution of water and other substances requires further analysis, but it is safe to say Cabeus holds water.”
It was the “Moon Mineralogy Mapper” that was a part of chandrayan mission of ISRO that gave the first evidence for water on moon. It detected wavelengths of reflected light that would indicate a chemical bond between hydrogen and oxygen in materials on the thin layer of upper soil.
Then on october 9 NASA conducted the “bombing the moon” experiment the Lunar impact probe and its results are that came out on friday.Scientists have been analyzing a mile-high plume of debris kicked up by the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite last month after it crashed into a crater near the moon’s south pole.
For space enthusiasts who stayed up, or woke up early, to watch the impact on Oct. 9, the event was disappointing, as they failed to see the mile-high debris . Even some high-powered telescopes on the Earth like the Palomar Observatory in California did not see anything.
The impact created by the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket created a two-part plume of material from the bottom of the crater. The first part was a high angle plume about 10-12 meters across of vapor and fine dust and the second a lower angle ejecta curtain of heavier material.Since the impacts, the LCROSS science team has been working almost nonstop analyzing the huge amount of data the spacecraft collected.
The new discovery causes to question the 40 years of assumptions about lunar surface and its components
The Moon was once thought to be dry. Then came hints of ice in the polar craters. In September, scientists reported an unexpected finding that most of the surface, not just the polar regions, might be covered with a thin veneer of water. Scientists want to know the source and history of whatever water they find. It could have come from the impacts of comets, for instance, or from within the Moon. Some scientists hope that the water, in the form of ice accumulated over billions of years, holds a record of the solar system’s history.
If its so it will give us a great lot of information about the begining of universe and the may be the about life too. There is much to be found about the universe. Vacuumwalker has got a lot to do.