Chandrayaan’s the finding of the millennium

India’s Chandrayaan-1 is becoming like Sachin Tendulkar: reaching new milestones with every stride. The prestigious Rs 386-crore mission’s latest lunar mark is the discovery of 600 million metric tons of water ice on the moon’s north pole. The discovery was made by a Nasa payload on board Chandrayaan-1 called Mini-Sar (miniature synthetic aperture radar), a lightweight instrument that weighs 10 kg. It found more than 40 small craters with water ice, the size of the craters ranging between one and nine miles. Scientists say the discovery of water ice anywhere on the moon is extremely important because it can serve as a natural resource for astronauts on future lunar landing missions. The ice could be melted into drinking water or be separated into its components of oxygen and hydrogen to provide breathing air and rocket fuel for launching interplanetary missions from the moon. In September 2009, Isro’s moon impact probe and the hyper spectral imaging camera (Hysi), along with Nasa’s moon minerology mapper, announced the discovery of water molecules on the moon. But, these were not large deposits. In contrast, the Mini-Sar is stated to found huge quantities of water ice. Former Isro chairman G Madhavan Nair, who was at the helm of the Chandrayaan-1 mission, has described Chandrayaan’s latest finding as pathbreaking. “It’s the finding of the millennium. Chandrayaan-1 has paid itself 10 times more than its value. In recent memory, no other mission has given rise to water findings as Chandrayaan-1,” Nair said.