One Big Step for India, A Giant Leap for Mankind

Nasa Probe On Chandrayaan Finds Water On Moon’s Surface

It is a giant leap for India’s space programme and the biggest scientific discovery of the 21st Century. India’s maiden moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, has found water, a discovery that scientists say will upend thinking about space and boost research. And, of course, it has helped shake off the failure tag from the Rs 386-crore Chandrayaan-I project that was aborted last month.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman Madhavan Nair gives a press conference at the ISRO office in Bangalore on September 25, 2009. Nair confirmed the discovery of water molecules by the moon mineralogy mapper (M3) through its Lunar mission Chandrayaan-1.

Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters holds a spoon to illustrate the amount of water discovered on the surface of the moon at a briefing to discuss new science data from the moon collected during national and international space missions September 24, 2009 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. NASA scientists have discovered water molecules in the polar regions of the moon. Instruments aboard three separate spacecraft revealed water molecules in amounts that are greater than predicted, but still relatively small. Hydroxyl, a molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom, also was found in the lunar soil. The findings were published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science. NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3, instrument reported the observations. M3 was carried into space on Oct. 22, 2008, aboard the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. Data from the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, or VIMS, on NASA's Cassini spacecraft and the High-Resolution Infrared Imaging Spectrometer on NASA's EPOXI spacecraft contributed to confirmation of the finding. The spacecraft imaging spectrometers made it possible to map lunar water more effectively than ever before.