National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) says its optical system, which uses quantum cascade lasers (QCL) that emit terahertz photons, can more easily locate water on the moon.
Berhanu Bulcha, an engineer at the Goddard Space Flight Center, is leading a mission to develop a heterodyne spectrometer that will be able to distinguish between water, hydrogen ions and hydroxyl compounds, which most existing technologies cannot do, NASA said. Their technology uses the "quantum tunneling" effect to produce high-power terahertz lasers, making up for the shortage of existing laser technologies in searching for water on the moon.
Berhanu Bulcha believes that a heterodyne spectrometer based on a stable, high-power, terahertz laser is able to clearly identify and locate the water source on the moon.
Therefore, Dr. Burcha's team is developing a quantum cascade laser that uses the physical properties of unique quantum cascade materials only a few atoms thick to produce photons in each electron transition. In these materials, the laser emits photons at a specific frequency, which is determined by the thickness of the AC semiconductor layer, rather than the elements in the material.
The team's goal is to build a laser for NASA's Artemis Project that can be used in aviation flight. The small size and low power consumption of the QCL means that the spectrometer system can be embedded in a shoebox-sized "1U" cube satellite, or can even be used as a handheld device for future explorers on the moon or elsewhere in the solar system.
