A payload onboard ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 mission has made the first-of-its-kind discovery on the distribution of one of the noble gases, Argon-40, to study the lunar exosphere as well as the surface from where this gas is understood to have escaped.
- The Chandra’s Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2 (CHACE-2), a quadrupole mass spectrometer on Chandrayaan-2 mission made the observations to provide an insight into the dynamics of the lunar exosphere.
- The CHACE-2 observations provide details on the spatial variations in Ar-40 through the lunar day covering the equatorial and mid-latitude regions of the Moon.
- The uniqueness of this result from Chandrayaan-2 mission lies in the fact that although Apollo-17 and LADEE missions have detected the presence of Ar-40 in the lunar exosphere, the measurements were confined to the near-equatorial region of the Moon
- Ar-40 originates from the radioactive decay of Potassium-40 (K-40) present below the lunar surface.
