The Contradictory Studies: Water on the Moon and Its Location

 

Moon, water, women

There is a new evidence on water on the Moon, as for this information the water is no longer placed all in one area, according to new information, it is evenly distributed all over the surface of our satellite. It is available there day and night, but it doesn’t mean that it is easy to get it.

The data found can make it possible for scientists to find answers on many questions, like where is the water on the Moon from, and how it could be used. In case the Moon has enough water and it is quite accessible, it has all the chances to be used as a resource. The explorers and scientific missions on the Moon will be able to use it, or convert it into H or O2 for rocket fuel or breathable oxygen.

The explorers don’t really need to look for water on lunar surface, it is pretty much everywhere, the signal that indicates on water is at any location there. The availability of water probably is not connected to the geological structure or composition of the lunar soil. The water is just there and it is all around.

Though the results do not support previous studies, as they indicated that lunar polar latitudes had more water deposits, and that water amount varied during the lunar day which is approximately 29.5 Earth days. If this information is combined, because we cannot say that one is false, the researchers concluded that water molecules can move all over the lunar surface but they stick to the cold gaps and structural unevenness in the soil near the north/south poles. A cold gap is so cold that the water vapor or any other volatiles become stable for some time as soon as they interact with the surface. The period of their stability might be up to few billions of years.

The topic is still vague because it is hard to understand the way the research was done and information processed. The main data was coming from remote tools that calculated the power of sunlight reflected from the Moon’s surface. If there is water somewhere, sensor-like tools take a special spectral image at 3 micrometers wavelengths, which is in infrared spectrum, so we cannot see it.

However, lunar surface can get really hot, so it literally glows with its own light seen in the infrared spectrum. It is really hard to differentiate the reflected sunlight and the Moon glow. It is possible to do that with the help of extremely precise temperature data.

So, the scientists found out a way to get temperature information by modelling the data. This model was created with the help of Diviner instrument based on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The group of scientists used this temperature model to implement data collected before with the help of the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a tool that measures spectrum that was specifically created by NASA’s JPL in Pasadena to present for another project - India’s Chandrayaan-1 orbiter.