Bangalore/Mumbai: It is a giant leap for India’s space programme and the biggest scientific discovery of the 21st Century. India’s maiden moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, has found water, a discovery that scientists say will upend thinking about space and boost research. And, of course, it has helped shake off the failure tag from the Rs 386-crore Chandrayaan-I project that was aborted last month.

The historic development, that TOI in a global newsbreak reported in Wednesday’s edition, took place just prior to the termination of the mission on August 30, 2009. Although water was spotted by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), a Nasa probe and one of the 11 payloads on the spacecraft, glory shone on Isro for the discovery that was made after nearly five decades of lunar exploration by Western nations.

"If it weren’t for them (Indian Space Research Organisation), we wouldn’t have been able to make this discovery,’’ said Carle Pieters, the Brown University researcher who analyzed the data from the Nasa probe.

Pieters, a planetary geologist, has told scientists that the discovery “opens a whole new avenue of lunar research but that we have to understand the physics of it to utilize it.’’      A Brown University statement on Thursday said, “The discovery by M3 promises to reinvigorate studies of the moon and potentially upend thinking of how it originated.’’

 Water molecules (H20) and hydroxyl — a charged molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom — were discovered across the surface of the Moon. The M3 had covered almost 97% of the Moon before Chandrayaan-1 was terminated.

Brown University scientists say that while the abundance is not precisely known, “as much as 1,000 water molecule parts-per-million could be in the lunar soil: harvesting one tonne of the top layer of the Moon’s surface would yield as much as 32 ounces of water’’.

Isro chairman Madhavan Nair described it a path-breaking event, and Chandrayaan-I project director Mylswamy Annadurai called it one of the greatest examples in international collaboration in space.

Chandrayaan’s surprise find triggered tremendous excitement among Indian space scientists who were disappointed that the mission had to be terminated because of a communication breakdown.

Not A DRY RUN

What’s Been Found?

Very fine films of water on dust particles on lunar surface

How Much Water Is There?

If you squeeze a cubic metre of lunar dust, you’ll get a litre of water

How Was It Seen?

Nasa’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper on board Chandrayaan detected water from electromagnetic radiation emanating from different minerals on and just below lunar surface

Why Is It A Big Deal?

Potentially, humans could live there. They could split water into oxygen (for breathing) and hydrogen (for rocket fuel). Also, there could be water in other planets too

Why Did Scientists Miss Water Earlier?

There were traces of moisture on rock samples brought back by other Apollo missions but scientists weren’t sure if the moisture was deposited after these were brought back