On August 23, the Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission successfully landed on the hitherto unexplored South Pole of the Moon. New data recently acquired by its Pragyan rover indicated the existence of important elements. This means that the Indian mission can now be considered a scientific and technical success.
Aiming to study the region and verify the existence of elements and substances that make human presence on the Earth's satellite possible, Chandrayaan-3 has already made progress beyond that previously achieved. However, the Indian space effort has yet to find what this and other missions in the current "lunar race" are most looking for on the Moon: water.
What elements Chandrayaan-3 has already found
In the most recent statement since Chandrayaan-3's landing, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) revealed that the mission confirmed the presence of sulfur, based on analysis by the Laser Induced Burst Spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument. According to ISRO, this discovery "was not possible with the instruments aboard the orbiters" sent to the Moon until then.
The first results of the Indian mission's investigation have also confirmed the presence of aluminum, calcium, iron, chromium, titanium, manganese, silicon and oxygen at the Moon's South Pole. So far, however, no hydrogen molecules, an indispensable element for the existence of water, have been found.
But the mission has not yet come to an end, and the ISRO statement stresses that "a full investigation of the presence of hydrogen is ongoing."
Why is the presence of water on the Moon so important?
In the darkest and coldest parts of the Moon's poles, ice deposits have been found. At the southern pole, most of the ice is concentrated at lunar craters, while the northern pole’s ice is more widely, but sparsely spread. More on this @NASAMoon discovery: https://t.co/kvjPbMrEWK pic.twitter.com/ZkVFyKrOB6
— NASA (@NASA) August 20, 2018
Countries such as the United States, China, Russia and India have announced missions to explore the southern region of the Moon with one main objective: to find favorable conditions for the installation of future space bases. The idea is that the Moon will become the next step for future space missions to "farther places" in the galaxy. For this to happen, however, there must be essential elements for human presence. And the main one is water.
The other elements found so far by Chandrayaan-3 are also of great importance. This is because transporting large quantities of materials to future bases on the Moon would be extremely expensive. Therefore, it will be more feasible to establish a presence if the Moon is already the source of most of what the researchers need.
However, H2O is indispensable for the production of fuels, oxygen and the maintenance of human life as a whole. And it was evidence that there may be water frozen at the bottom of the craters at the Moon's south pole that triggered the latest Moon race.
In the above post, made by NASA on the social network X, we can read:
Ice deposits have been found in the darkest and coldest areas of the Moon's poles. At the south pole, most of the ice is concentrated in lunar craters, while the ice at the north pole is more extensive but sparsely scattered.
To date, Japan, Israel and Russia have failed in their attempts to land on the Moon's south pole. India made history by becoming the fourth country to land on the Earth's satellite and the first to reach the lunar southern region. The United States only plans a lunar landing mission for 2025 or 2026, with Artemis 3, and China aims to return to the Moon in the 2030s.
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