A global team of scientists led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing has stated that they’ve detected water under the surface of the Moon. They say that they have done this by using the data that China National Space Administration provided from the country’s Chang’e-5 lander. This is a great achievement as this has been the first lunar sample return mission since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976.
The team made use of a panoramic camera, lunar mineralogical spectrometer (LMS), and lunar penetrating radar to look for evidence of water, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances this week in collaboration with researchers from the National Space Science Center of CAS, the University of Hawai’i at M?noa, the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics of CAS and Nanjing University.
“It’s like a ‘field trip’ out on the Moon, the first opportunity to detect signs of water at close range and high resolution on the lunar surface,” said lead author and Chinese Academy of Sciences researcher Lin Honglei, according to a statement obtained by the South China Morning Post.
Signals were observed by the team which gave the idea that there is the presence of water detected in reflectance spectral data acquired by the Chang’e-5 lander. The theory is that solar wind has gradually swept hydrogen atoms toward the Moon, according to SCMP ‘s reporting.
There is still a lot of skepticism associated with the news. However, scientists have always suspected the presence of water on the moon and if it is true, the moon could be colonized by humans.
