Approximately 1.3 Trillion Pounds Of Water Ice Detected
Using data from a NASA radar that flew aboard India's
Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists have detected ice deposits
near the moon's north pole. NASA's Mini-SAR instrument, a
lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, found more than 40 small
craters with water ice. The craters range in size from 1 to 9 miles
in diameter. Although the total amount of ice depends on its
thickness in each crater, it's estimated there could be at least
1.3 trillion pounds of water ice.
"The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and
resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that
water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring
on the moon," said Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the
Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in
Houston. "The new discoveries show the moon is an even more
interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational
destination than people had previously thought."
During the past year, the Mini-SAR mapped the moon's
permanently-shadowed polar craters that aren't visible from Earth.
The radar uses the polarization properties of reflected radio waves
to characterize surface properties. Results from the mapping showed
deposits having radar characteristics similar to ice.
"After analyzing the data, our science team determined a strong
indication of water ice, a finding which will give future missions
a new target to further explore and exploit," said Jason Crusan,
program executive for the Mini-RF Program for NASA's Space
Operations Mission Directorate in Washington.
Chandrayaan-1
The Mini-SAR's findings are being published in the journal
Geophysical Research Letters. The results are consistent with
recent findings of other NASA instruments and add to the growing
scientific understanding of the multiple forms of water found on
the moon. The agency's Moon Mineralogy Mapper discovered water
molecules in the moon's polar regions, while water vapor was
detected by NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite,
or LCROSS.
Mini-SAR and Moon Mineralogy Mapper are two of 11 instruments on
the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1. The Applied
Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD, performed the final integration
and testing on Mini-SAR. It was developed and built by the Naval
Air Warfare Center in China Lake, CA., and several other commercial
and government contributors.