Magmatic water detected on lunar surface
MUMBAI: Scientists have detected magmatic water — water that originates from deep within the Moon's interior — on the surface of the Moon. These findings, published in the August 25 issue of Nature Geoscience, represent the first such remote detection of this type of lunar water, and were arrived at using data from Nasa's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), according to a press release issued by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory on Tuesday night.
The M3 was one of the instruments on board India's maiden mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-1 which was launched on October 22, 2008.
Though it was a two-year mission, it stopped communicating on August 29, 2009.
The discovery represents an exciting contribution to the rapidly changing understanding of lunar water, said Rachel Klima, a planetary geologist at the laboratory and lead author of the paper, "Remote detection of magmatic water in Bullialdus Crater on the Moon" .
"For many years, researchers believed that the rocks from the Moon were 'bone dry' and that any water detected in the Apollo samples had to be contamination from Earth," said Klima, a member of the Nasa Lunar Science Institute's (NLSI) Scientific and Exploration Potential of the Lunar Poles team. "This surficial water did not give usinformation about the magmatic water that exists deeper within the lunar crust and mantle, but we were able to identify the rock types around Bullialdus crater," said co-author Justin Hagerty, of the US Geological Survey.
Source - TOI - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Magmatic-water-detected-on-lunar-surface/articleshow/22110664.cms
The M3 was one of the instruments on board India's maiden mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-1 which was launched on October 22, 2008.
Though it was a two-year mission, it stopped communicating on August 29, 2009.
The discovery represents an exciting contribution to the rapidly changing understanding of lunar water, said Rachel Klima, a planetary geologist at the laboratory and lead author of the paper, "Remote detection of magmatic water in Bullialdus Crater on the Moon" .
"For many years, researchers believed that the rocks from the Moon were 'bone dry' and that any water detected in the Apollo samples had to be contamination from Earth," said Klima, a member of the Nasa Lunar Science Institute's (NLSI) Scientific and Exploration Potential of the Lunar Poles team. "This surficial water did not give usinformation about the magmatic water that exists deeper within the lunar crust and mantle, but we were able to identify the rock types around Bullialdus crater," said co-author Justin Hagerty, of the US Geological Survey.
Source - TOI - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Magmatic-water-detected-on-lunar-surface/articleshow/22110664.cms