There was no Sun. Scientists have figured out how the water found on the moon appeared
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Chinese scientists believe that astronauts can use this water to produce oxygen and fuel on the moon.
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Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found that the water found in the lunar regolith by the Chang'e-5 rover was formed from the solar wind. That this water is related to the solar wind (the stream of particles from the Sun that constantly hit the Moon) was made clear by the discovery of water that has a low ratio of deuterium to hydrogen. It is powerful to split water on the Moon into oxygen and hydrogen in order to obtain both the air necessary for life and rocket fuel, scientists say, Express writes.
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In their study, Yanting Lin and his colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences figured out how hydrogen is stored in lunar regolith at different temperatures. The analysis showed that the water on the Moon, which appeared due to the solar wind, can be well preserved both in the middle and higher latitudes on the Moon. The moon's polar regions may contain even more water than found in samples collected by the Chang'e-5 lunar rover, scientists say.
Previous studies have shown that the presence of water on the Moon's surface depends on both latitude and time of day on our satellite. Unlike NASA's Apollo missions and Soviet Luna landers, which landed at low lunar latitudes, the Chang'e-5 rover collected its samples of lunar regolith at mid-northern latitude. It is important to note that these rock samples were collected from the youngest known lunar basalts, which are less than 2 billion years old. According to scientists, these samples of lunar regolith are the key to understanding the space-time distribution and retention of water in the lunar regolith formed by the solar wind.
Scientists studied the hydrogen content by depth in the samples, and also calculated the corresponding ratios of deuterium to hydrogen in this water. The analysis showed high concentrations of hydrogen and an extremely low ratio of deuterium to hydrogen, which corresponded to hydrogen that was obtained from the solar wind.
Experiments with regolith heating showed that hydrogen, which was brought by the solar wind, can be stored in the lunar regolith.
The results of the study showed that both temperature and latitude on the Moon are the key to how hydrogen enters and distributes in the lunar soil. Scientists also came to the conclusion that even more hydrogen can be found in the polar regions of the Moon, closer to its poles.
Focus already wrote about a previous study of samples of the same lunar regolith, thanks to which scientists found out that there is a fairly large concentration of water at the landing site of the Chang'e-5 lunar rover.
