India’s Chandrayaan helps NASA detect water on Moon

Washington: Using data collected by India’s Chandrayaan mission, NASA has detected magmatic water locked under the surface of the Moon.

The findings represent the first remote detection of this form of water that originates from deep within the Moon’s interior, NASA researchers said.

Earlier studies had shown the existence of magmatic water in lunar samples returned during the Apollo programme.

NASA said scientists using data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument aboard the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, remotely detected magmatic water, or water that originates from deep within the Moon’s interior, on the lunar surface.

M3 imaged the lunar impact crater Bullialdus, which lies near the lunar equator.

“This rock, which normally resides deep beneath the surface, was excavated from the lunar depths by the impact that formed Bullialdus crater,” said Rachel Klima, a planetary geologist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel….