Chandrayaan-1 finds ice deposits at Moon’s North poll

India's maiden Lunar Mission, Chandrayaan-1, has detected the presence of ice deposits near the moon's North Pole, offering more scope for another attractive scientific exploration on multiple forms of water on the moon.

A NASA radar aboard India's maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 has detected craters filled with thick deposits of ice near the moon's north pole, the US space agency said.

According to an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Press release issued here yesterday the analysis of the data obtained by the Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini-SAR) on board Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft provided evidence for the presence of ice deposits.

The Mini-SAR instrument found more than 40 small craters, ranging in size from one to nine miles, containing water ice. "Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater, it's estimated there could be at least 600 million metric tons of water ice," the US space agency said in a statement.

The Mini-SAR has spent the last year mapping the moon's permanently-shadowed polar craters that are not visible from Earth, using the polarization properties of reflected radio waves.

Prof. Paul Spudis, Principal Investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, said ''the new discoveries by Chandrayaan-1 and other lunar missions show that the moon was an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploratory and operational destination than people had previously thought.''

Indian scientists had reported last year in papers published in the 'Science' journal that they analysed light waves detected by NASA-made instruments on board the Indian satellite and two US probes, and determined that they showed there was water on the surface of the moon.

- Asian Tribune -