A payload aboard India’s Chandrayaan-2 orbiter, which is orbiting the Moon since August 2019, has for the first time mapped the abundance of sodium on the Moon.
This finding improves upon the already known data based on successive laboratory investigations of returned samples of Apollo, Luna and Chang'e missions, besides from India’s own first lunar mission Chandrayaan-1’s X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer (C1XS) which detected sodium from its characteristic line in X-rays that opened up the possibility of mapping sodium on the Moon.
The new findings from India's second unmanned lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, provide an avenue to study surface-exosphere interaction on the Moon, which would aid the development of similar models for Mercury and other airless bodies in our Solar System and beyond.