There’s Water There!

M Annadurai’s euphoria on Thursday was very well justified. Project Director of Chandrayaan-I, aborted on August 30 belying hopes of new lunar breakthroughs, Annadurai on Thursday was on the top of the world as Carle Pieters, the Brown University planetary geologist who analysed the data transmitted by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) carried by Chandrayaan-I, declared that M3 had detected water on the lunar surface — but yes, no ‘‘lakes, oceans or even puddles’’, but ‘‘molecules of water and hydroxyl (a charged molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom) that interact with molecules of rock and dust specifically in the top millimetres of the moon’s surface’’. Yet, it is one of the greatest scientific discoveries in human history. The M3 discovery after its coverage of about 97 per cent of the lunar surface, as Pieters said, ‘‘opens a whole new avenue of lunar research’’ and ‘‘promises to reinvigorate studies of the moon and potentially upend thinking of how it originated’’. But where is the ISRO contribution? Pieters has an answer: ‘‘If it weren’t for them (ISRO), we wouldn’t have been able to make this discovery’’. This makes everything plain enough, hence Annadurai’s delight. ‘‘The baby (Chandrayaan-I) has done its job by helping us find water on the moon. This was one of the main objectives of Chandrayaan-I,’’ said the Chandrayaan-I Project Director.

The Chandrayaan-I milestone is not just an occasion for ISRO celebration. As Annadurai rightly puts it, it is one of the greatest examples in international collaboration in space too. But first thing first. The entire ISRO team that has made the lunar mission — the first of its kind by India — so impressively successful deserves praise by the whole nation. India today stands proud and more confident in the space science domain. However, mere praise means little for the ingenious scientist. He needs autonomy, infrastructure and an ambience free from bureaucratic hassles and interference. He needs complete freedom to operate at his creative best, which is what the best universities and research centres in the world have achieved. Therefore, the government should now wake up to what inspires and constitutes world-class research, and the best way of making a beginning is by paying the scientist in accordance with his research promise and performance so that he is free from thoughts financial and is thus enabled to focus on research and research alone. It is high time the government gave the best of facilities to the scientific community and made it possible for the world-class researchers in our midst to contribute to international collaborations on the new and emerging frontiers of science and technology. If the trace of water on the moon’s surface has begun to inform new research dimensions among Indian scientists, coupled with the fact that there is a vast potential for interdisciplinary studies when it comes to exploring the hostile moon, let our researchers as the ISRO breed be given all that they want and deserve. They are doubtless a very promising fraternity capable of decoding the moon’s deep water secrets. THE SENTINEL