At 6.20 am on Wednesday, engines will ignite, thrusters will fire and a dream will be realised. As a 1,304-kg rocket blasts off into space, it will take India to new heights with the mission to moon - Chandrayaan-1.
And with it, hope will float for finding ice trapped in the moon’s polar regions with the help of an instrument — High Energy X-ray (HEX) Spectrometre, designed and developed at the Ahmedabad based Physical Research Laboratory (PRL).
The instrument is developed in association with ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC), Banglore. Principal scientist, Chandrayaan-1 and director, PRL J N Goswami says, “The moon mission will try to validate the concept based on which one expects water to be present in the permanently shadowed regions of the moon. HEX will give credence to possible presence of water ice mixed with lunar surface soils in the polar region.” The two payloads HEX and a miniature Imaging Radar Instrument (Mini-SAR) in Chandrayaan-1 mission will have emphasis on study of the polar region and search for water ice.
Each of the payloads are actually different scientific instruments which will help scientists perform a variety of experiments. “Mini-SAR is an instrument from the John Hopkins University, USA, that will try to detect possible presence of water ice,” adds Goswami. Both instruments will be complementary. Explaining the nature at polar regions, Goswami says, “There is a global interest for future long-term exploration of the moon and particularly for setting up human-cum-robotic base on it.
At present the lunar polar region appears to be the most plausible site for such a base for two reasons. Firstly, mountains near the polar region where sunlight is perennial, have the possibility of solar energy harnessing. The other permanently shadowed areas with temperature much below zero degree act like a deep freezer where there is a possibility of finding water ice mixed with lunar soils.” The earliest claims of finding water in moon’s craters were made during the Clementine Mission to Moon in 1994.
