Chandrayaan 2’s big success: Argon-40 gas discovered in the outer atmosphere of the Moon

The race to learn the complex processes taking place on the Moon’s surface and its atmosphere is increasing. Many countries are trying to know as much as possible about the Moon. The US space agency NASA is advancing its second manned mission to the Moon. Meanwhile, the Indian space agency ‘ISRO’ has claimed an interesting discovery. ISRO has said that its Chandrayaan-2 orbiter has found an important gas in the upper atmosphere of the Moon. ISRO has said that Chandrayaan’s ‘Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2’ (CHACE-2) instrument has detected ‘argon-40’ gas in the lunar exosphere. This is the outermost region of the Moon’s atmosphere, where atoms and molecules rarely collide.

ISRO hopes that its observations will help in understanding the extraterrestrial species in and around the Moon.
This observation can also help in understanding the radiogenic activities under the surface of the Moon.

of ISRO according toThis discovery is important because ‘Argon-40’ (Ar-40) is a noble gas, which makes it one of the most stable gases and serves as a key tracer for understanding the process of the lunar surface. Is. According to ISRO, ‘Ar-40’ gas is produced by the radioactive disintegration of potassium-40 (K-40) present under the surface of the Moon.

This discovery is also important because the Apollo-17 and LADEE missions have detected the presence of Ar-40 gas on the Moon’s outskirts, but that discovery was limited to the Moon’s near-equatorial region. For the first time, Chandrayaan’s ‘Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2’ (CHACE-2) instrument has continuously observed Ar-40 gases in the latitude range of -60 to +60 degrees. This Study It is published in the Journals of Geophysical Research Letters.

Chandrayaan-2 mission is also important for ISRO because its lander and rover were over due to no soft landing in the year 2019. The CHACE-2 instrument in its orbiter suffered no damage and continued its experiments on the Moon.

Later this year, ISRO is planning to launch the ‘Chandrayaan-3’ mission, so that it can once again try to land on the lunar surface.