Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

China's Chang’e 5 Lunar Probe Detects Water on Moon


Sun 09 Jan 2022 | 12:59 PM
Rana Atef

China's Chang'e 5 lunar probe detected the earliest evidence of water's existence on the moon's surface, Sputnik reported on Sunday.

The latest photos captured by the probe showed a moon rock surrounded by lunar soil that contained water.

A joint team of scientists from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS) worked on analyzing the photos by using the probe's developed lunar mineralogical spectrometer (LMS).

This technology is based on using infrared light to analyze the the mineralogical components of the moon's surface.

China’s Chang’e 5 lunar lander has found the first-ever on-site evidence of water on the Moon’s surface. Photos shot by the probe show the Moon rock and surrounding lunar soil that the water was detected in.

Regarding the analysis' results, they show that water content in the soil, and the rock was less than 120 ppm in the soil, and about 180ppm in the rock.

Experts believe that the soil may have more water than the rock but it could be dried by the solar winds, in addition, the source of these waters are still unidentified.

It is worthy to mention that China is planing to have wide studies and missions to the moon through the next five years.

The state's first man mission to the moon will consist of three astronauts, in addition, it is part of the state to build the Chinese space station by 2022.

The state is planning to launch eleven space missions for concluding the establishment of its space station.

It started the earliest steps for building the station in late April by sending the station’s largest unit.

Aiming to become a major space force by 2030, China succeeded in improving its space presence by sending a rover to Mars in May, two years after the landing of the first Chinese spacecraft on the moon.