For decades, scientists have been wondering how the moon can have water.
It is dry, airless and lacks an atmosphere, so the presence of water on its surface is nothing but a mystery.
Over the years, theories have indicated icy comets, the impact on micrometerite and the buried reserves locked in ancient craters.
But a new NASA survey transfers the script for all this. In the most realistic laboratory simulation, researchers so far show that the sun wind in the sun can create water directly in the moon soil.
This breakthrough not only supports the hypothesis of decades, but also intensifies the case of the use of the moon’s natural resources in future human missions.
Personalized laboratory setting mimics a lunar medium
Li Hssia Jeo, a researcher at NASA GODDARD’s space flight center, the team has built the most realistic simulation so far how the solar wind affects the moon.
Working with a colleague of NASA researcher Jason McLain, the Yeo designs a personalized experiment that reproduces the harsh, airless environment of the moon, using a unique camera containing a sun beam, vacuum conditions and molecules detector.
“It took a long time and a lot of iterations to design the components of the apparatus and make them all fit inside,” McLain said. “But it was worth it, because after eliminating all possible sources of pollution, we learned that this decades the idea of the solar wind was true.”
The experiment used samples of lunar powder collected during the NASA Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
After removing traces of moisture by baked the samples, the team exposed them to a simulated solar wind using a particle accelerator, imitating about 80,000 years of lunar exposure in just a few days.
Chemistry triggered by sunlight
When the protons of the solar wind, essentially hydrogen nuclei, collide into the surface of the moon, they do not find resistance.
The earth’s magnetic field and the atmosphere protect it from these particles, but the moon, which is missing both, has the full effect.
These protons are confronted with electrons in the lunar regolite, forming hydrogen atoms. These hydrogen atoms are then combined with oxygen in minerals such as silica to form hydroxyl (OH) and possibly water (H₂O).
“The exciting thing here is that only with lunar soil and the main ingredient from the sun, which always spits out hydrogen, there is an opportunity to create water,” Yeo said. “It’s amazing to think.”
Researchers used a spectrometer to observe how the chemical composition of the lunar powder changes over time.
They noticed immersion of infrared light about 3 microns, a signature associated with the presence of water.
Although the team could not confirm whether clean water was being formed, the data strongly indicated the production of both hydroxyl and water molecules.
Consequences of Artemis and search for moon water
NASA’s Artemis program aims to return the moon astronauts, especially to the South Pole, where much of the frozen water of the moon is thought to exist in permanently shaded craters.
The findings of the study offer an important view of how water can continue to be formed today.
In the past observations of spacecraft, researchers noted that the spectral signal associated with water of water throughout the lunar day.
The signal is intensified in the cool morning and fades as the surface is heated – probably due to the movement or escape of the water molecules. As the surface cools again overnight, the signal returns.
This cycle hints at an active, continuing process, mainly led by the solar wind.
While other factors such as micrometeorites can contribute, this new study intensifies the case of the role of the sun as a water source and opens up new opportunities to collect that water in support of the future human study.
The study has been published in Geophysical Research Magazine: PlanetsS