It’s official: THERE WATER IN THE MOON. The data brought by two spacecrafts points out to only one conclusion, there is a substantial amount of water in the moon. The two satellites are the Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter and the LCROSS satellite. But these two satellites just adds up to the data provided by three previous spacecrafts that shows some evidence of the existence of hydrogen-oxygen bonds on the surface of the moon.
India’s first ever lunar probe, Chandrayaan-1 launched October 2009 and began operating August 2009 was the latest among those three. Equipped with Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) it was able to detect certain wavelengths of light reflected in by the sun-lit surface that indicates a bond of hydrogen and oxygen, which can either be Hydroxyl or water.
In 1999, Cassini passed by the moon on its way to Saturn and gave back some evidence of hydroxyl/water presence which is slightly stronger near the poles.
Deep Impact spacecraft gives the same evidence when it used infrared to scan the moon’s surface.
Though evidence points to the existence of water in the moon, its origin is still fuzzy. It may either be brought from the outside through water containing comets or by solar wind. The other possibility is even more intriguing—that the moon was itself was the origin of water.
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