The universe has zillions of questions yet to be answered where in our solar system is one tiny part. Today, one of those many million questions has been answered closely…that is the existence of life in outer space.

The news of Chandrayaan-1 finding ice in the craters of the moon is a major breakthrough which denotes an amount as high as six hundred million metric tonnes of ice which has been formed from water. This ice has been found on the North Pole of the Moon. This means that Moon contains 1.3 trillion pounds of water ice. Similar conditions have been found on the South Pole as well.

Announced at the 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Congress, this has led to vast opening for traveling in space in the near future. The event was organized by the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

Chandrayaan–1 carried the payload made by NASA known as the Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar or the Mini – Sar weighing 10 kilograms. This Mini – Sar found abundant water ice which could be more than forty crates in craters ranging from two to fifteen kilometres in diameter. While flying over the lunar poles, these data came into picture. Each strip of data collected was between 150 to km in length and 8 km in width.

This is a major boon for all the space expeditions in the future, especially to the moon. The astronauts could be aided with water by melting ice from a natural source. This ice can also help in generating oxygen which can provide for breathing air for these astronauts as well as rocket fuel for the purpose of interplanetary missions.

This has certainly opened gateways for human colonization on the moon. With Earth already being over populated with extensive consumption of natural resources, our moon can definitely be the alternative. However, more is yet to be known on the other geographical characteristics of the Moon.

Initially, in September 2009, water molecules were discovered by the ISROs moon impact probe and its hyper spectral imaging camera which is also known as Hysi. With this, the Moon Mineralogy Mapper of NASA was an aid which helped in this major discovery. By June 2009, ninety percent of the Moon poles had been mapped by mini – Sar. These findings are yet to be brought out in the Geophysical Research Letters which is a US journal.

According to the J N Goswami, the PRL (Physical Research Laboratory), almost 5 months were spent only in evaluating the results found. This was because such a path breaking discovery had to have concrete proof to be presented with it.

Amidst the entire process, there has been the emergence of the so – called lunar water politics. Off all the people involved, speculations have been on a high regarding Paul Spudis who is the Principal Investigator for Mini – Sar and his claims on the issue. It has raised a debate on the following:

The Bi – static experiment conducted last year, which was a joint collaboration between NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Chandrayaan – 1. Here, Spudis claimed that the entire experiment was a failure due to Chandrayaan’s antenna which was not facing the moon during the experiment. It is also being said that Spudis is not very happy with the development.

This was however not accepted by the officials at ISRO who in turn demonstrated their side with evidence, thus proving Spudis wrong.

Additionally, it was also reported that Spudis did not agree to NASA’s claim regarding water vapour being found on moon by the LCross. And he also stated the claims of Kaguya (Japanese Moon Mission) finding a cave on the moon as being false.

Also, ISRO has had a key role behind the discovery of water on Moon. However, ISRO feels that scientists at NASA are taking away all the credit.

The above could simply be considered as a feud within which could be brought to a compromise by clearing the air on the issue.

On the other hand, there are many conspiracy theorists who feel that landing on moon has been the biggest fake ever. The reaction of these theorists is yet to be seen.

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