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Chandrayaan-1 results indicate that electrons from Earth- According to the study, which was published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the electrons may have helped water form on the lunar body.
Scientists have discovered that high-energy electrons from the Earth may be producing water on the Moon by examining the remote sensing data from India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission.
The study, which was led by scientists from the University of Hawai’i (UH) at Manoa in the US, found that these electrons in Earth’s plasma sheet assist in weathering processes on the Moon’s surface, which involve the breakdown or dissolution of rocks and minerals.
According to the study, which was published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the electrons may have helped water form on the lunar body.
To comprehend the Moon’s genesis and evolution as well as to provide water supplies for upcoming human exploration, the researchers said it is essential to grasp the Moon’s water concentrations and distributions.
Chandrayaan-1 results indicate that electrons from Earth
They added that the new discovery might also aid in explaining the formation of the water ice previously found in the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions.
The detection of water molecules on the Moon was made possible by Chandrayaan-1. The Chandrayaan program’s initial Indian lunar probe, the mission was launched in 2008.
The solar wind, which is assumed to be one of the main processes that creates water on the Moon, bombards the lunar surface with high-energy particles like protons.
The scientists looked at how the Moon’s surface weathering changed when it passed through Earth’s magnetotail, which nearly entirely shelters the moon from solar wind but not from photons from the Sun.
According to Shuai Li, an assistant researcher at the UH Manoa School of Ocean, “This offers a natural laboratory for studying the formation processes of lunar surface water.”
“The lunar surface gets battered by solar wind when the Moon is outside the magnetotail. Since there are hardly any solar wind protons present inside the magnetotail, water creation was predicted to virtually completely disappear, according to Li.
Li and co-authors examined the remote sensing information gathered by the imaging spectrometer Moon Mineralogy Mapper on India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission between 2008 and 2009.
They carefully evaluated how water creation changed as the Moon passed through the plasma sheet and magnetotail of Earth.
Li stated, “To my amazement, the remote sensing data revealed that the water production in the Earth’s magnetotail is almost identical to the period when the Moon was outside of the Earth’s magnetotail.
This suggests that there might be alternative formation processes or freshwater sources in the magnetotail that aren’t directly related to the implantation of solar wind protons. In particular, radiation from high-energy electrons has characteristics that are similar to those of the protons in the solar wind, he said.
The researchers said that this discovery and the group’s earlier investigation of rusty lunar poles suggest that the Earth and its Moon are closely connected in numerous underappreciated ways.
Chandrayaan-1 (ISRO)
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched Chandrayaan-1 in October 2008, and it was in operation until August 2009. An impactor and an orbiter were part of the mission.
Last month, India became the first nation to successfully place a lander and a rover on the Moon’s mysterious south pole as part of the Chandrayaan-3 project.