Two years ago, China sent the Chang’e 5 probe to the Moon with the intention of taking samples of Oceanus Procellarum, the dark spot on the Moon visible from Earth.
Now those analyzes of those samples have been revealed. Professor Hu Sen’s team from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he found hitherto unknown deposits of water among the crystallized fragments he collected. They are the remnants of cooled and scattered asteroid impacts that cover the floor of the Moon.
They estimate that there are between 300,000 and nearly 300 trillion kilograms of water in tiny glass beads scattered around the Moon.
According to their analysis, published today in Nature Geoscience, water forms from hydrogen released in the stream of charged particles flowing from the Sun, called the solar wind. “These results indicate that lunar soils contain much more water derived from the solar wind than previously thought.” they write.
This suggested that grains played a central role in the Moon’s water cycle and they could be a major reservoir that space bases could tap into.
“Impact glass beads have the ability to store significant amounts of solar wind-derived water at the surface…in addition to the possible presence of trapped water ice in permanent shadows in the polar regions.”
Water in the ocean from storms
The Moon was previously thought to be dry, but in the last 20 years orbiting spacecraft have detected hydrogen and ice in deep craters at the lunar poles.
In 2020, a team of NASA scientists detected water molecules in the sunlit areas of the Moon for the first time.
They proposed that water might be trapped in glass beads, which would explain why it hadn’t evaporated.. Evidence of the water was previously found in the sample glass collected by the Apollo missions 40 years ago.
In late 2020, China’s Chang’e-5 spacecraft became the first spacecraft since the Apollo era to return to Earth with rocks from the Moon.
Change-5 landed in the Ocean of Storms, a geologically unique area that hadn’t previously been sampled, explained Craig O’Neill, a planetary scientist at Queensland University of Technology who was not involved in the study.
“It’s an extraordinarily radioactive part of the Moon.
“It’s also close enough to the equator to get a fair amount of sunshine…so [el agua] It will have to be bound to a mineral to be stable.”
Glass beads are created when micrometeorites strike the surface, melting the surrounding rock.
Previous analyzes dating back to the age of beads collected by the Chang’e-5 spacecraft showed that the area had been bombarded for the past 2 billion years in a process known as impact gardening.
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.