Wei-Hass reported in late 2020 that two new studies promise to help untangle the moon’s mysterious water cycle—and could hint at resources for future lunar astronauts. For years, scientists have worked to uncover the mysteries of water on the moon. Now two new studies published in Nature Astronomy confirm that water may be found all over the lunar surface.
One study reports the first unambiguous evidence for water molecules clinging to or encapsulated within grains in the lunar soil on the sunlit swaths of the surface. The second study modeled small zones on the moon cast in permanent shadow and found that some 15,400 square miles—an area equivalent to nearly 7,500,000 football fields—are cold enough to harbor ice, about 20 percent more than once thought.
By investigating what forms of water linger on the lunar surface and where that water is, scientists hope to better understand the moon’s mysterious water cycle. Unlike on Earth, where water circulates in rivers and rain, the formation of water on the moon may be driven by hydrogen in the solar wind reacting with oxygen on the surface, as well as by icy meteorites that strike the ground. Lunar water may also migrate from sunny regions to shadowy zones.
But the exact movements of this water, and possible transfer from sunny to shadowy zones, remain mysterious. “We still have a lot of work to understand if at all they’re connected,” says Jessica Sunshine, a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland who was not part of either study team. But the new research “suggests a much more complex process than what we thought before.”
This work is also vital for future humans traveling to the moon and beyond, including NASA’s upcoming Artemis mission that promises to place the first woman and next man on the moon. The presence of water and ice hints it may be possible to mine this resource to convert to fuel, reducing the load future spacefarers must take in their ventures beyond Earth.
The new insight into lunar water is part of a slow shift in the way we think of our planetary companion. Once thought to be a desiccated landscape, this dynamic world has complex sources and sinks of many forms of water.
“It’s been a slow revolution,” says Paul Hayne, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder and lead author of the shadow zone study. “But it’s been a revolution.”
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