A new analysis of data obtained from two lunar missions has produced evidence that the water on the moon is spread widely across the surface and is not limited to a specific region or a single soil type.
![[Courtesy: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center]](https://www.hayadan.org.il/images/content3/2018/02/moon.0001_print.jpg.webp)
From the data it appears that the water is present both day and night, although it is not easily accessible. The new findings will be able to help researchers understand the source of the water on the surface of the moon and how it will be possible to harness it in the future for the benefit of humanity as an available source of water. If there is a sufficient amount of water on the moon, and if it can be reached relatively easily, future research missions can use it as drinking water or convert it into hydrogen and oxygen and these can be used as fuel for spaceships or as oxygen for breathing.
"We found that regardless of the time of day and the depth to which we observed, the measurement signal showed that water is always present on the moon," said Joshua Bandfield, a senior researcher at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and the lead author of a new article describing the research findings and published in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience. "It does not seem that the presence of water depends on the composition of the soil, and the water remains stable in the field."
The new findings contradict some of the many previous studies that suggested that a larger amount of water was located at the poles of the moon and that the measurement intensity of the water signal increases and decreases depending on the lunar day (29.5 Earth days). Based on these previous findings, some researchers proposed that the water molecules are able to "skip" across the surface of the moon until they penetrate into 'cold traps' inside dim craters near the north and south poles of the moon. In the field of planetary science research, a 'cold trap' refers to an area that is so cold that the water vapor and vapors of other substances that come into contact with the surface remain stable for a long time, possibly even up to billions of years.
The professional debate continues over the details of how the findings were achieved so far. The main evidence came from measuring devices based on remote sensing that measure the intensity of the sun's rays reflected from the surface of the moon. When water is present, devices of this type pick up a spectral fingerprint at wavelengths of about three micrometers, a wavelength that is beyond the range of visible light and approaches the infrared radiation region. However, the surface of the moon is able to heat up enough to "glow", or emit its own light, in the infrared radiation of the spectrum. The challenge is to differentiate within this mixture between the incident light and the emitted light. In order to distinguish between these two types of radiation, researchers need to use accurate information about temperature changes.
The researchers developed a new method for including the information about the temperature changes, while obtaining a detailed model from the measurements obtained with the help of a device designed to detect underground water (Diviner) and which is on top of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The researchers ran this temperature model on data previously collected by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a visible and infrared spectrometer on board the Indian Chandrayaan-1 satellite orbiting the moon.
The new findings about the fact that the water on the moon may be stationary and spread over a wide area suggest that it may have appeared in the beginning as the OH form, a more active form relative to the water molecule H2O, an atom consisting of one atom of oxygen and one atom of hydrogen. This form, called hydroxyl, does not remain stable in this form and tends to join other molecules or another hydroxyl molecule. Therefore, the hydroxyl forms must be released from the minerals in order to be usable. The researchers also suggest that the water molecules on the surface of the moon are not loosely bound to the surface. "By applying several limitations regarding the mobility of the water or hydroxyl molecules, we can estimate the amount of water that will reach the cold traps in the polar regions," said one of the researchers. By understanding the mechanisms that exist on the surface of the moon, researchers may be able to understand the origins of water and how it is preserved over time in other rocky bodies throughout the solar system.
The researchers are still discussing the insights gained from the new data regarding the origin of the water on the moon. The findings indicate that the hydroxyl or water molecules were created by the solar wind that heated the surface of the moon, although the team does not rule out the possibility that these molecules could have come from the moon itself, slowly releasing them from the minerals in the depths of the soil, where they have been found since its formation of the moon
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