Chandrayaan Helps Discover More Water on the Moon

NASA scientists expect to locate at least 600 million metric tons of water-ice there.

If you thought the Chandrayaan Mission was over a few months ago, please be prepared to be proven incorrect. After scrutinizing evidence garnered from different scientific instruments aboard the Chandrayaan, the NASA had last year announced the presence of "little" amount of water on the moon. It was back then, hailed a very important discovery. A few months down the lane, NASA's Mini SAR search aboard the Chandrayaan has managed to discover significant amount of water on the moon in an area near the north pole of our closest celestial neighbor. The mini SAR is extremely small scientific instrument that weighs less than 10 kgs.

The news was publicized by NASA this week. NASA scientists exposed that they expect to find at least 600 million metric tons of water- ice in the area riddled with craters. The number of these craters is supposed to be around 40 and range in 2 to 15 kms in diameter. These craters are typically colder than the surrounding areas and have been long thought to be the best places to look for water on the moon. Jason Crusan, a NASA spokesperson, said: After analyzing the data, our science team dogged a strong indication of water ice, a finding which will give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit.

The Chandrayaan I mission was India's first effort at sending its own probe to the moon. The spacecraft was launched aboard a customized PSLV rocket back in October 2008. The mission was formally declared abandoned after the ISRO lost contact with the Chandrayaan just a slight less than a year since the Chandrayaan was in Orbit. Though, in a short span of time, the Chandrayaan mission was able to unravel many secrets of the moon, which was hitherto unknown to us - the significant occurrence of water being the latest. Chandrayaan had, on board, eleven investigational payloads of which five were Indian, three from the European Space Agency (ESA), two from U.S. and one was from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

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Time Flies When You’re Having Fun

Hi. My name is Nicole Passonno Stott. At 46 years old, I’m a mother, I’m a wife, and I’m a NASA astronaut who’s about to make her first space flight. I’m writing this journal to try and share some of my experiences preparing for the flight and then once on orbit I hope there will be some surprising things to share with you about living and working in space.

Like so many things in life, this job has proven for me that time really does fly when you’re having fun. It was a “mere” 9 years ago that I received the exciting news that I had been selected as a member of the NASA Astronaut Class of 2000. I found myself very fortunately with 16 other people that would make up the 18th group of NASA astronauts.

Flying in space is most certainly the goal of any astronaut, but what you have to accept is that no matter how quickly you get assigned to your first space flight you are ultimately going to spend the majority of your time as an astronaut working here on the planet. Fortunately, the work and training is all very cool, and has been filled with challenges and opportunities to experience things that I’m pretty certain wouldn’t have been possible for me otherwise.

The pictures to the right are my year 2000 and year 2009 astronaut portraits. I haven’t changed a bit….☺ The past 9 years have been fun and the time has flown by. Along the way my husband and I have been blessed with a beautiful son, I have visited places around the world that I never imagined I would ever have the chance to see, and we have made some lifelong friends. And now, to top it off, I’m going to have the amazing opportunity to fly in space --- launching this summer on the Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-128, living and working for 4 months as a crewmember onboard the International Space Station (ISS), and then returning to Earth on the Space Shuttle Atlantis mission STS-129.

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