Using a
NASA radar flying aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists are
getting their first look inside the moon's coldest, darkest craters, where some
suspect ice may be hiding.
The Mini-SAR
instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, has passed its initial
in-flight tests and sent back its first data. The images show the floors of
permanently-shadowed polar craters on the moon that aren't visible from Earth.
Scientists
are using the instrument to map and search the insides of the craters for water ice.
"The
only way to explore such areas is to use an orbital imaging radar such as
Mini-SAR," said Benjamin Bussey, deputy principal investigator for
Mini-SAR, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "This is an exciting first step for the team which has worked diligently
for more than three years to get to this point."
The images,
taken on Nov. 17, 2008, cover part of the Haworth crater at the moon's south
pole and the western rim of Seares crater, an impact feature near the north
pole. Bright areas in each image represent either surface roughness or slopes
pointing toward the spacecraft.
Further
data collection by Mini-SAR and analysis will help scientists to determine if
buried ice deposits exist in the permanently shadowed craters near the moon's
poles.
"During
the next few months we expect to have a fully calibrated and operational
instrument collecting valuable science data at the moon," said Jason
Crusan, program executive for the Mini-RF Program for NASA's Space Operations
Mission Directorate in Washington.
Mini-SAR is
one
of 11 instruments on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1
and one of two NASA-sponsored contributions to its international payload. The
other is the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a state-of-the-art imaging spectrometer
that willvprovide the first map of the entire lunar surface at high spatial and
spectral resolution.
Chandrayaan-1
launched from India's Satish Dhawan Space Center on Oct. 21 and began orbiting
the moon Nov. 8.
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