NASA Radar Finds Ice Deposits at Moon's North Pole; Additional Evidence of Water Activity on Moon
WASHINGTON -- Using data from a NASA radar that flew aboard India's
Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists have detected ice deposits near
the moon's north pole. NASA's Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight,
synthetic aperture radar, found more than 40 small craters with water
ice. The craters range in size from 1 to 9 miles (2 to15 km) in
diameter. Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness
in each crater, it's estimated there could be at least 1.3 million
pounds (600 million metric tons) of water ice.
"The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting
data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water
creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the
moon," said Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the Mini-SAR
experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. "The new
discoveries show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive
scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had
previously thought."
During the past year, the Mini-SAR mapped the moon's
permanently-shadowed polar craters that aren't visible from Earth.
The radar uses the polarization properties of reflected radio waves
to characterize surface properties. Results from the mapping showed
deposits having radar characteristics similar to ice.
"After analyzing the data, our science team determined a strong
indication of water ice, a finding which will give future missions a
new target to further explore and exploit," said Jason Crusan,
program executive for the Mini-RF Program for NASA's Space Operations
Mission Directorate in Washington.
The Mini-SAR's findings are being published in the journal Geophysical
Research Letters. The results are consistent with recent findings of
other NASA instruments and add to the growing scientific
understanding of the multiple forms of water found on the moon. The
agency's Moon Mineralogy Mapper discovered water molecules in the
moon's polar regions, while water vapor was detected by NASA's Lunar
Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS.
Mini-SAR and Moon Mineralogy Mapper are two of 11 instruments on the
Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1. The Applied
Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., performed the final integration
and testing on Mini-SAR. It was developed and built by the Naval Air
Warfare Center in China Lake, Calif., and several other commercial
and government contributors.
For more information about NASA's Mini-SAR, also known as Mini-RF,
visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mini-rf
For more information about the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, visit:
http://m3.jpl.nasa.gov
For more information about LCROSS, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/lcross
For more information about Chandrayaan-1, visit:
http://www.isro.org/
Source: NASA
