Water is found on the moon, and it can be used for manned missions

The moon seems to be an inhospitable and unusually dry place, but as part of our return to the satellite, various space agencies are stepping up the search for water on its surface.

In this regard, the analysis of samples taken in Ocean Procellarum The Chinese Space Agency’s Chang’e-5 mission estimates that there could be between 30 and 30 billion tons of liquid element on the Moon’s surface. Such a discovery could be used not only as a source of energy, but also to supply water to future lunar bases without having to load it from Earth on costly resupply missions.

what seemed impossible

All bodies in the solar system with a diameter greater than 1000 km are defined as planetary bodies. Not all of them have an atmosphere like the Moon, and their absence exposes them to an onslaught of asteroids, comets and their fragments, which have gradually and over the past 4.5 billion years dug craters into their surface. These projectiles are constantly hitting them, and the process is very brutal as they hit at high speed.

The resulting energy can vaporize the projectile itself and some of the surface rock, ripping out craters and creating impact plumes for a few moments, during which the materials even reach a temperature where they go into a vapor phase. Exogenous materials are also implanted in this process as a type of rock called impact breccia is created: body and projectile materials are mixed and compacted under high pressure.

The prospects for the survival of volatile substances, that is, those that can melt at relatively low temperatures, look bleak. In fact, the presence of water on the lunar surface in significant quantities was a big unknown. Until now.

Opening of China’s Chang’e-5 mission

Knowing all of the above, we might think that the surfaces of planetary bodies that do not have an atmosphere, such as Mercury, the Moon, or the asteroid Vesta, should be absent in water, but we are mistaken. This is confirmed by a new study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which, based on regolith samples brought back by China’s Chang’e-5 mission, has just shown that certain glass beads formed after these meteoroid impacts are especially capable of absorbing very significant amounts of water.

In fact, the surfaces of these balls are constantly washed by hydrogen and other chemical elements that make up the solar wind, a kind of breath that our star continuously emits and which expands around it, washing around the planetary bodies around it.

Chemical elements coming with the solar wind interact with glassy balls, and water is formed on their surface, which, as a result of a diffusion process, is retained in its mineral structure.

In fact, silicate crystals are particularly susceptible to water alteration, a process that breaks them down and which also seems to be important in environments that are spatially processed.space weathering).

Millions of tons of water on the moon

Together, given that these impacted spherules are dragged through the regolith across the lunar surface, they represent a considerable amount of stored water. In fact, it is estimated that it could be between 30 and 30 billion tons in total, depending on the amount and storage capacity they have, which seems to depend on their composition.

As if that weren’t enough, the hydrated chondrite materials that reach our natural satellite are also embedded in the regolith that forms its surface. In fact, groups of hydrated carbonaceous chondrites implanted their components on the lunar surface over many epochs, enriching the lunar regolith and the so-called impact breccia. These ever-increasing shells contain hydrated minerals: phyllosilicates, oxides, and carbonates, which are the result of water alteration of water-soaked asteroids in early times, tens of millions of years before the Earth formed.

Missions to find water and other resources

Not surprisingly, recent missions have used state-of-the-art instruments to identify water-rich areas on the Moon. This is the case of the Russian Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector (LEND) instrument, which was developed for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter 2009 (LRO) interplanetary mission, with which NASA explored in detail future lunar landing sites at the lunar south pole.

This ingenious device is based on the fact that neutrons jump from atom to atom like billiard balls, losing energy with each collision. Some of these neutrons fly off into space, where LEND detects them.

However, those regions of the lunar regolith that contain hydrogen reduce the number of emitted neutrons. So to map possible ice deposits, scientists use this type of neutron detector.

The results obtained by the probes used so far indicate the existence of deposits of frozen water in these craters and areas permanently shielded from sunlight.

We can get an idea of ​​the urgency of finding water on the Moon, as well as the inherent difficulties associated with its extraction and use. It is from CSIC that we are working on these methods of resource reuse. on the spotknown as the ISRU.

A detailed understanding of the nature and properties of the materials that make up the lunar surface is the key to overcoming technological difficulties associated with the possibility of using them to solve new problems. For this reason, we have suggested using all-terrain vehicle as part of the Artemisa missions, implement a program to find resources for immediate use.

In fact, the development of ISRU methods will be the first step to be taken in future manned sample return missions if you want to reduce their cost while increasing the possibility of using the Moon as a gateway to other worlds. In fact, this is how the so-called Moon Gates are built.

In this scenario, which seems futuristic today, the liquid element will be needed to produce energy, or even if we manage to develop adequate purification systems, they could be widely used by astronauts or to terraform environments near future lunar bases.

Josep M. Trigo Rodriguez, Principal Investigator of the Meteorites, Small Bodies and Planets Group at the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE – CSIC)

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.

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