A Chinese Spacecraft has discovered water on the Moon
Chinese scientists have examined the moon samples from the Chang’e 5 mission. In lunar dust actually is water.
Various analyzes from remote sensing missions have already shown that there should be water on the moon. The Chinese lunar mission Chang’e 5 was actually able to detect water in the lunar regolith. In December 2020, the Chinese space agency CNSA collected up to two kilograms of samples from the lunar surface using a lunar vehicle.
The samples were then brought back to Earth, where they safely landed in Inner Mongolia on December 17, 2020. On January 7, 2022, the Chinese scientists published their study results in the American journal Science Advance. The title of the study is In situ detection of water on the Moon by the Chang’e-5 lander.
Water on the Moon, dust, and rock
The researchers came to the conclusion that there are up to 120 parts per million (ppm) of water — as hydroxyl and/or H2O — in the regolith of the moon. In other words: the lunar soil contains up to 120 grams of water per ton. In the blistering rock, there should be up to 180 grams of water per ton.
The water on the moon is said to be “largely due to the action of the solar wind”. According to the study, this contains hydrogen. And the additional 60 ppm water in the rock could come from inside the moon, the researchers suspect.
“The returned samples are a mixture of granules on the surface and in the subsurface. But an in-situ probe can measure the outermost layer of the moon’s surface,” Lin Honglei told the Chinese news agency Xinhua. He is a researcher at the CAS Institute for Geology and Geophysics. The researchers suspect that the moon eventually became dry due to the degassing of the mantle reservoir.
First signs of water more than ten years ago
As early as October 2009, the American space agency Nasa dropped one of its probes, the LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite), onto the surface of the moon, blowing up dust. The chemical composition of the crater floor had been observed and analyzed with infrared cameras and spectrometers. The result: an amount of water corresponding to the size of Lake Constance should be stored at the South Pole.
The Chinese mission has now provided direct evidence. The extraction of water on the moon is not only important for the supply of future astronauts. The water can also be used to produce fuel and thus the moon can be used as a starting platform for manned missions to other planets. First, the People’s Republic of China would like to build a station on the moon together with the Russian space agency Roskosmos. They recently published their plans for this.
