For the first time ever, NASA has confirmed that water exists even on sun-lit areas of the moon.
The discovery was made by NASA's SOFIA or Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy in a historic moment towards humanity's efforts towards colonizing the moon in the near future.?
ALSO READ:?NASA Artemis: Musk¡¯s SpaceX And Bezos¡¯s Blue Origin Compete To Take Humanity To The Moon
This discovery indicates that water may be more distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to cold, shadowed places than what was previously estimated.
¡°We had indications that H2O ¨C the familiar water we know ¨C might be present on the sunlit side of the Moon,¡± said Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.?
¡°Now we know it is there," added Hertz, in a NASA statement. "This discovery challenges our understanding of the lunar surface and raises intriguing questions about resources relevant for deep space exploration.¡±
ALSO READ:?NASA's Artemis Mission: 11 Shortlisted Astronauts To Take 2nd Giant Leap On Moon, Possibly Mars
NASA always knew the moon had water locked into its surface or hidden below it in some shape or form.?Like the shaded image of the moon's Shackleton Crater shown above, a 21-km-wide crater permanently shadowed crater near the lunar south pole where water ice can form, according to NASA.
But till today, there was no conclusive proof that water molecules could also be found on the sun-facing region of the moon. This is indeed huge news from NASA's future moon mission planning perspective.
NASA's crediting the discovery of water in sunlit areas of the lunar surface to Goddard postdoc Dr. Casey Honniball, in an official tweet from their Twitter account.
SOFIA is an airborne observatory (a customized aeroplane, in fact) that detected water molecules (H2O) in Clavius Crater, one of the largest craters visible from Earth, located in the Moon¡¯s southern hemisphere.
Data from this location revealed water in concentrations of 100 to 412 parts per million ¨C roughly equivalent to a 12-ounce bottle of water ¨C trapped in a cubic meter of soil spread across the lunar surface. The results are published in the latest issue of Nature Astronomy.
¡°Without a thick atmosphere, water on the sunlit lunar surface should just be lost to space,¡± said Dr Casey Honniball, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at NASA¡¯s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. ¡°Yet somehow we¡¯re seeing it. Something is generating the water, and something must be trapping it there.¡±
Before NASA and other earth-bound aerospace missions start thinking about possibilities of this water discovery, more proof needs to be found about just how much water does the average lunar surface contain. And looks like we won't have to wait too long to find the answer to that question, as NASA's Artemis Missions plan to send a male and female astronaut back to the surface of the moon by 2024. I'm sure they will drill and find more clues towards unlocking this water on moon mystery.
ALSO READ:?NASA Will Send 1st Woman To Land On Moon In 2024, In A Historic 'Artemis' Mission