INDIA: The Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter’s X-ray spectrometer “CLASS,” according to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), has mapped an abundance of sodium on the Moon for the first time.
To analyse the sodium composition of the Moon, it was stated that the Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer (C1XS) detected sodium from its characteristic line in X-rays.
The national space agency said in a statement on Friday that Chandrayaan-2 used CLASS (Chandrayaan-2 Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer) in a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters to map the abundance of sodium on the Moon for the first time.
It states in the announcement, “Due to CLASS’s excellent sensitivity and performance, sodium line signatures are delivered in clean form. It was constructed at the ISRO’s U R Rao Satellite Center in Bengaluru.”
According to the study, some signals might have come from a tiny layer of sodium atoms that are only tenuously bound to the lunar grains.
These sodium atoms would be less prone to being blown out of the surface by solar wind or UV light if they were a part of the minerals on the Moon.
Additionally, it is demonstrated that the surface sodium varies throughout the day, which may help to clarify how a steady flow of atoms maintains the exosphere.
Intriguingly, the presence of this alkali element in the Moon’s thin atmosphere, where atoms seldom ever collide, boosts interest in it.
The statement claims that this region referred to as the “exosphere,” begins at the Moon’s surface and extends for thousands of kilometres before blending into interplanetary space.
The new data from Chandrayaan-2, according to the ISRO, “offers a tool to explore surface-exosphere interaction on the moon, which would aid in building equivalent models for mercury and other atmosphere-less worlds in our solar system and beyond.”
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