Days after Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed into the Moon, Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-3 mission is set for a soft landing on the south pole on Wednesday evening. And if it does successfully, India’s Chandrayaan-3 will be the first to land on Moon’s south polar region.
Luna-25 craft, too, had been scheduled to land on the south pole this week but crashed on Sunday.
So, why are India and other countries see it as a key to a Moon colony?
Chandrayaan-3 is currently aiming to find the perfect spot for a soft landing of its Vikram lander on the Moon’s challenging terrain.
“The ISRO always tries to do different things on each mission. So, this is one aspect. The second aspect is the possibility of finding a fair amount of water. On the southern side of the Moon because of big craters there are quite deep and permanently shadowed areas will be there, and then there is a bombardment of comets and asteroids continuously happening on the land surface – these are kinds of celestial bodies and when they crash on the Moon surface, ice and missing particles are deposited. This has been happening last mission years,” ISRO’s former group director Suresh Naik told HT.
“It is expected that there will be a lot of water in ice deposited there. Another factor is that power generation is possible because of its unique topography. On one hand, there is a large shadowed area and other the other hand, there are a lot of peaks. And these peaks are permanently under the sunlight. So, it is an advantageous position to establish a human colony in the near future – China is already thinking of establishing a human colony there by 2030. There are also so many precious minerals available on the Moon. One of the precious minerals is helium-3 which could help us generate pollution-free electricity,” he said.
Naik also said in the next two years, nine Moon missions are planned by different nations.
Both the United States and China have planned missions to the south pole.
A previous Indian mission failed in 2019 to safely land near the area targeted by Chandrayaan-3.
Once Chandrayaan-3 deploys a rover near the lunar south pole, ISRO scientists said they will run a series of experiments for 14 days to learn more about the composition of lunar soil and rocks. The south pole of the Moon is expected to have ice deposits and minerals.
India is looking to become the first country to conduct studies of the south pole. No mission has yet ventured to this part of the Moon.
How did scientists find water on the Moon?
As early as the 1960s, before the first Apollo landing, scientists had speculated that water could exist on the Moon. Samples the Apollo crews returned for analysis in the late 1960s and early 1970s appeared to be dry.
In 2008, Brown University researchers revisited those lunar samples with new technology and found hydrogen inside tiny beads of volcanic glass. In 2009, a NASA instrument aboard the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-1 probe detected water on the moon’s surface.
In the same year, another NASA probe that hit the south pole found water ice below the moon’s surface. An earlier NASA mission, the 1998 Lunar Prospector, had found evidence that the highest concentration of water ice was in the south pole’s shadowed craters.
Why is water on Moon important?
Scientists are interested in pockets of ancient water ice because they could provide a record of lunar volcanoes, material that comets and asteroids delivered to Earth, and the origin of oceans.
If water ice exists in sufficient quantities, it could be a source of drinking water for Moon exploration and could help cool equipment.
It could also be broken down to produce hydrogen for fuel and oxygen to breathe, supporting missions to Mars or lunar mining.
The 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty prohibits any nation from claiming ownership of the moon. There is no provision that would stop commercial operations.
A US-led effort to establish a set of principles for moon exploration and the use of its resources, the Artemis Accords, has 27 signatories. China and Russia have not signed.
(With inputs from Reuters)
