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John O | March 2019

Scientists observe water droplets heating up and moving on the dayside of the Moon


By Josh Perry, Editor
[email protected]

 

NASA scientists used the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to observe the movement of water molecules on the dayside of the Moon and the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) provided measurements of the layer of water molecules stuck to the lunar surface and how it changes during the day.

 


NASA has studied bouncing water droplets on the lunar surface.
(Wikimedia Commons)

 

“Up until the last decade or so, scientists thought the Moon was arid, with any water existing mainly as pockets of ice in permanently shaded craters near the poles,” a report from NASA explained. “More recently, scientists have identified surface water in sparse populations of molecules bound to the lunar soil, or regolith. The amount and locations vary based on the time of day. This water is more common at higher latitudes and tends to hop around as the surface heats up.”

 

The water molecules are tight to the surface until near lunar noon, then they release heat that they have absorbed and bounce to a location that is cold enough that they stick to the surface. Scientists have studied the amount of energy that is needed to remove water from lunar materials to better understand how the molecules are bound to the surface or the Moon’s limited atmosphere.

 

“Scientists have hypothesized that hydrogen ions in the solar wind may be the source of most of the Moon’s surface water,” the report continued. “With that in mind, when the Moon passes behind the Earth and is shielded from the solar wind, the ‘water spigot’ should essentially turn off. However, the water observed by LAMP does not decrease when the Moon is shielded by the Earth and the region influenced by its magnetic field, suggesting water builds up over time, rather than ‘raining’ down directly from the solar wind.”

 

Researchers believe this will help understand how water could be accessible to human missions to the Moon for fuel, radiation shielding, or for thermal management. Being able to take resources from the lunar surface makes future missions more viable.

 

The research was recently published in Geophysical Research Letters. The abstract stated:

 

“Data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Lyman Alpha Mapping Project and Diviner are consistent with surface water on the Moon varying in abundance with both terrain type and local time/temperature. A thermal desorption model including latitudinally varying desorption activation energy reproduces the observations.

 

“We interpret the observed variability in spectral slopes as water molecules in the uppermost lunar regolith (<1% of a monolayer) thermally adsorbing and desorbing from grains depending upon the local temperature and availability of chemisorption sites.

 

“The Lyman Alpha Mapping Project data also demonstrate that in the Earth's magnetotail, where the solar wind source of protons is absent, a decrease in H2O on the surface is not observed. This rules out a steady state process involving a prompt solar wind source and favors a migration mechanism for the distribution of adsorbed water on the Moon.”

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