Why did the Russian media criticize the American NASA for discovering water on the Moon?


The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) revealed this Monday that “The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has confirmed, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of the Moon.”

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However, Russia’s state media Sputnik criticized NASA in a report saying that American scientists have ignored the Soviet Union’s discovery of water on the Moon nearly 50 years ago.

SOFIA, a Boeing 747SP airliner and the world’s largest observatory, has detected water molecules (H2O) in one of the largest craters visible from Earth’s Clavius ​​crater, located in the southern hemisphere of the Moon.

NASA’s statement refers to earlier observations when they detected some form of hydrogen, but were unable to distinguish between water and its close chemical relative, hydroxyl (OH).

The report further mentions that data from this location revealed “water in concentrations of 100 to 412 parts per million, roughly equivalent to a 12-ounce bottle of water, trapped in a cubic meter of soil scattered across the lunar surface.”

Sputnik in its report alleges that “if NASA scientists had read a little more work from their Soviet colleagues, they might have realized that the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 probe made this discovery in 1976.”

“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) sent dozens of probes to various objects in outer space, including the moon and Venus, making important contributions to humanity’s knowledge of the solar system. However, his work was often misinterpreted by Western scientists, ”the media report states.

Of note is the 1978 article published in Geokhimiia (Geochemistry), the monthly scientific journal of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which stated that it had discovered water on the lunar surface in the Mare Crisium crater.

Furthermore, he mentions that the article by MV Akhmanova, BV Dementyev & MN Markov makes definitive claims about the discovery of water.

According to Arlin Crotts, a professor of astronomy at Columbia University, the three scientists had drilled two meters into Mare Crisium and extracted 170 grams of lunar soil. They showed that lunar soil was composed of about 0.1% water by mass, and that more water appeared further below the surface than used by infrared absorption spectroscopy, according to the Sputnik report. Unfortunately, his work has never been cited.

Meanwhile, when probing for the presence of water, NASA says that the water may have been created or delivered to the surface of the moon due to several factors.

“Micrometeorites that fall on the lunar surface, carrying small amounts of water, could deposit the water on the lunar surface after impact. Another possibility is that there could be a two-step process whereby the solar wind from the Sun delivers hydrogen to the lunar surface and causes a chemical reaction with oxygen-containing minerals in the soil to create hydroxyl.

Meanwhile, the radiation from the micrometeorite bombardment could be transforming that hydroxyl into water, ”he says.