Chandrayaan finds how water is generated on Moon

William Atkins
Thursday, 15 October 2009 20:27

Science - Space

The Chandrayaan-1 SARA instrument found the “signature” for these molecules. And, the Chandrayaan-1 Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument team recently reported this finding.

The article “Extremely high reflection of solar wind protons as neutral hydrogen atoms from regolith in space” reports on this discovery. The article was published in the journal Planetary and Space Science.

Its authors are: Martin Wieser, Stas Barabash, Yoshifumi Futaana, and Mats Holmström, from the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (Kiruna, Sweden); Anil Bhardwaj, R. Sridharan and M.B. Dhanya, from the Space Physics Laboratory, Vikram Sarabhai Space Center (Trivandrum, India); Peter Wurz and Audrey Schaufelberger, from the Physikalisches Institut, University of Bern (Bern, Switzerland); and Kazushi Asamura, from the Institute of Space Astronautical Science (Yoshinodai, Sagamihara, Japan).

The authors report finding, “… extremely high reflection rates of solar wind particles from regolith-covered lunar surfaces.” [Paper]

The SARA instrument shows that “… up to 20% of the impinging solar wind protons are reflected from the lunar surface back to space as neutral ydrogen atoms.” [Paper]

The authors conclude, “This finding, generally applicable to regolith-covered atmosphereless bodies, invalidates the widely accepted assumption that regolith almost completely absorbs the impinging solar wind.”

The ESA article continues by saying, “The SARA results confirm that solar hydrogen nuclei are indeed being absorbed by the lunar regolith but also highlight a mystery: not every proton is absorbed. One out of every five rebounds into space. In the process, the proton joins with an electron to become an atom of hydrogen.”

Stas Barbash, one of the authors of the study and the European principal investigator for the SARA instrument, stated, “We didn’t expect to see this at all.”

By seeing hydrogen atoms reflect back into space, astronomers were surprised because they did not expect to see this happen.

However, the discovery is resulting in a new way to image planetary bodies without atmospheres.

Read the ESA article for more information on this exciting new way to learn more about our solar system and universe.