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There may be much more water on the Moon than previously thought, according to two studies published Monday that raise the tantalizing prospect that astronauts on future space missions may find refreshment, and perhaps even fuel, on the lunar surface.
The Moon was believed to be completely dry until about a decade ago, when a series of findings suggested that our closest celestial neighbor had traces of water ice in permanently shaded craters in its polar regions.
Two new studies published in Nature Astronomy on Monday suggest that the water could be even more widespread, including the first confirmation that it is present even in easily accessible sunlit areas.
If this water could be extracted, astronauts traveling to the Moon and beyond could have access to clean water. They could even split the molecules to make rocket fuel.
That’s of particular interest to NASA, which is planning a human mission to the Moon in 2024 and wants to build a sustainable presence there by the end of the decade to prepare for the trip to Mars.
The new study was able to “unequivocally” distinguish the spectral fingerprint of molecular water in an area illuminated by the sun, said lead author Casey Honniball of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology.
“If we find that water is abundant enough in certain places, we can use it as a resource for human exploration,” Honniball, who is also a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told AFP.
Previous research has found signs of water on the sunlit surface, but they were unable to distinguish between water (H2O) and hydroxyl, a molecule made up of a hydrogen atom and an oxygen atom that is a common drain cleaner in the Earth.
Using data from the Airborne Telescope of the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), the researchers used a more precise wavelength than previously used, 6 microns instead of 3.
They found a water concentration of around 100 to 400 parts per million in Clavius crater, one of the largest crater visible from Earth.
“That’s roughly equivalent to a 12-ounce (350 milliliter) bottle of water within a cubic meter of lunar soil volume,” Honniball told a NASA news conference.
These are not “pools of water”, he stressed, but rather dispersed molecules that do not form ice or liquid water.
Researchers believe they originate from solar winds or micro-meteorites and believe they could be trapped in glass beads or within grains on the lunar surface to protect them from the harsh atmosphere.
‘Little shadows’
In the second study, the researchers looked at the polar regions of the Moon, where water ice has been detected in lunar craters that never see sunlight.
NASA in 2009 found water crystals in a deep crater near the south pole of the Moon.
But the new study found evidence for billions of microcraters that could each hold a minuscule amount of ice.
“If you were standing on the Moon near one of the poles, you would see a whole ‘galaxy’ of tiny shadows dotted across the surface,” said lead author Paul Hayne of the Department of Astrophysics at the University of Colorado.
“Each of these little shadows, most of them smaller than a coin, would be extremely cold and most of them cold enough to hold ice.”
This “suggests that the water may be much more widespread on the Moon than previously thought,” Hayne said.
The authors say this could mean that approximately 40,000 kmtwo of the lunar surface has the ability to trap water.
They were able to reconstruct the size and distribution of these small craters using high-resolution images and lunar temperature measurements taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The microcraters should be as cold, around -160 degrees Celsius, as the largest, kilometer-scale lunar voids, Hayne said, adding that there are “tens of billions” of them.
Deep space exploration
Samples from these cold traps could tell us more about how the Moon, and even Earth, got their water, Hayne said, perhaps providing evidence of water delivered by asteroids, comets and the solar wind.
Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist with NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, said it was crucial to find out more about where the water came from and how accessible it is.
“Water is extremely critical to deep space exploration. It is a resource of direct value to our astronauts,” he told reporters, adding that it was heavy and therefore expensive to extract from Earth.
“As long as we don’t need to pack water for our trip, we have the opportunity to take other useful items with us, for example payloads to do more science.”
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