[ad_1]
One of the most important missions NASA is working on today is preparing for the Artemis mission that will return humans to the moon. NASA recently requested scientific reports to help the agency design a framework for the Artemis mission’s science operations. One of the proposals suggests that mission astronauts should bring lunar ice samples and lunar regolith samples.
By returning the lunar ice to Earth, scientists can find out where the moon’s water came from. Scientists speculated that ice could have existed on the moon since the days of the Space Race in the 1960s and 70s. As for the origin of the ice, scientists believe it could have been deposited by comets or produced by interactions between hydrogen and rich rocks. in oxygen.
The first clear evidence of water ice on the moon was discovered in the 1990s by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft. That spacecraft launched in 1998 and spent more than a year and a half mapping the surface of the moon. It detected high concentrations of hydrogen in the regolith near the polar regions with a depth of approximately 3.3 feet during its mission.
The Indian Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft that orbited the moon in 2008 and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009 confirmed the presence, particularly in the permanently shadowed craters at the moon’s south pole. A subsequent mission called the Lunar Crater Detection and Observation Satellite surveyed the southern crater of Cabeus and found water concentrations of up to about five percent by weight.
The spacecraft also found a host of other volatiles, including hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, and ammonia. The hope is that there is enough ice water on the Moon to support a human colony and manned missions by providing clean water and the ability to produce rocket fuel locally.
