A team of researchers has published a new analysis of lunar dust known as The richsuggesting that the water there may have been formed by the sun – or rather, by the interaction of the sun’s particles with those in the regolith.
The researchers, led by Yuxin Xu and Heng Sitian of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found chemistry in samples collected and returned to Earth by the Chang’e-5 mission that support the hypothesis of a solar origin for the water on the Moon.
Until recently, scientists considered our natural satellite dry, containing water only in pockets of ice at the poles. However, recent observations have shown that the surface there also has H2O, and even a Lunar water cyclewhere molecules “jump” from one region to another.
For this to become possible, the Moon needed “a little help” from the Sun: its solar wind is rich in high-speed hydrogen ions that reach the surface of the Moon, interact with metal oxides and bind with oxygen.
The authors came to this conclusion by analyzing 7 grains of olivine, 1 of pyroxene, 4 of plagioclase, and 5 of glass, and found a concentration of hydrogen similar to that of the solar wind. In other words, the sun may have been responsible for sending hydrogen to the moon to form water molecules with the oxygen already present.
It was also shown in the study that lunar grains can retain this hydrogen. Moreover, these particles are also kept on the lunar surface at different temperatures.
The study has been published in PNAS.
Source: PNAS
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