Nasa is talking so much about M3 ,becasue its the Nasa instrument on board c-1, designd for speciafic purpose of detecting water and other minrerals and their analysis based on primarily on m3.
Now that doesnt mean similar Isro insturments didnt detect water,no,infact its MIP,the first instrument on board c-1 to detect water and, ISRO waited for data generated by both indian & nasa instruments to be analyzed indepenedently and first appear in reputed Science magazine.
The fact is the data generated both by isro instruments which further corroborated by m3,confirm the presense of water on moonsurface.
Reports
Submitted on July 5, 2009
Accepted on September 15, 2009
Character and Spatial Distribution of OH/H2O on the Surface of the Moon Seen by M3 on Chandrayaan-1
C. M. Pieters 1*, J. N. Goswami 2, R. N. Clark 3, M. Annadurai 4, J. Boardman 5, B. Buratti 6, J.-P. Combe 7, M. D. Dyar 8, R. Green 6, J. W. Head 1, C. Hibbitts 9, M. Hicks 6, P. Isaacson 1, R. Klima 1, G. Kramer 7, S. Kumar 10, E. Livo 3, S. Lundeen 6, E. Malaret 11, T. McCord 7, J. Mustard 1, J. Nettles 1, N. Petro 12, C. Runyon 13, M. Staid 14, J. Sunshine 15, L. A. Taylor 16, S. Tompkins 17, P. Varanasi 6
1 Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
2
Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India.; Indian Space Research Organization, Bangalore, India.
3 U.S. Geological Survey, Denver, CO 80225, USA.
4
Indian Space Research Organization, Bangalore, India.
5 Analytical Imaging and Geophysics, Boulder, CO 80303, USA.
6 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.
7 Bear Fight Center, Winthrop, WA 98862,USA.
8 Mt. Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA 01075, USA.
9 Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD 207236005, USA.
10
National Remote Sensing Agency, Hyderabad, India.11 Applied Coherent Technology Corporation, Herndon, VA 22070, USA.
12 NASA Goddard, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
13 College of Charleston, Charleston, SC 29424, USA.
14 Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, AZ 857192395, USA.
15 University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
16 University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 379961410, USA.
17 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Arlington, VA 22203, USA.
The search for water on the surface of the anhydrous Moon remained an unfulfilled quest for 40 years. The Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) on Chandrayaan-1 has now detected absorption features near 2.8-3.0 µm on the surface of the Moon. For silicate bodies, such features are typically attributed to OH- and/or H2O-bearing materials. On the Moon, the feature is seen as a widely distributed absorption that appears strongest at cooler high latitudes and at several fresh feldspathic craters. The general lack of correlation of this feature in sunlit M3 data with neutron spectrometer H abundance data suggests that the formation and retention of OH and H2O is an ongoing surficial process. OH/H2O production processes may feed polar cold traps and make the lunar regolith a candidate source of volatiles for human exploration.
Character and Spatial Distribution of OH/H2O on the Surface of the Moon Seen by M3 on Chandrayaan-1 -- Pieters et al., 10.1126/science.1178658 -- Science
