★ June 25, 2024, 10:00 AM (UTC+8)
Speaker: Prof. Yang Liu (National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences / CAS)
Title: Water on the Moon: what we learned and will learn from China’s Chang’e missions
VIDEO
Prof. Yang Liu
Bio (Prof. Yang Liu)
Dr. Liu got his Ph.D. in Washington University in St. Louis, and now he is a Professor at the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Dr. Liu was a co-investigator on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission, and he also participated NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) mission and ESA’s Mars Express mission. Currently Dr. Liu serves as team members of a few China’s space exploration missions including Chang’e series and Tianwen-1 missions. His research program is focused on understanding the formation and evolution of planetary surfaces by integrating remote sensing observations, quantitatively theoretical modeling, and laboratory spectroscopy. The overarching themes include using remote sensing data sets to understand the evolution history of Mars and the Moon, quantitative remote sensing at infrared wavelengths of the surfaces of Mars, the Moon, and small bodies, and laboratory spectroscopy to study terrestrial and extraterrestrial samples. He has published more than 50 papers in high rank journals including Nature Astronomy and Science Advances.
Abstract
Hydrogen has been found in lunar pyroclastic glasses from Apollo samples, and subsequently water (OH or H2O) was discovered based on the remote sensing infrared spectra from the Chandrayaan 1 mission. Since then, many other Moon missions have seen hints of water in different forms and in different regions including China’s Chang’e missions. However, many questions remain in term of the origin, the form, and the distribution of the lunar water.
In this talk, I will briefly overview the history of the detection of the lunar water on the Moon, and then present what we have learned from China’s Chang’e mission. Finally I will introduce the scientific goals and the payloads of Chang’e-7 mission related to the study of the lunar water.
