Scientists from China and the United States have analyzed the impact glass beads from a lunar soil sample returned by China’s Chang’e-5 mission.
It has long been argued that there could be water and other volatile species at the surface of the Moon.
Renewed lunar exploration and advances in remote-sensing measurements in the 1990s allowed the neutron spectrometer on board NASA’s Lunar Prospector mission to confirm the existence of water ice at the lunar poles.
Following this, the Moon mineralogy mapper instrument on board India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft detected the absorption bands of hydroxyl and/or water on the lunar surface.
Furthermore, NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite impact experiment carried out in 2009 provided direct evidence for high water-ice abundances in permanently shadowed regions within Cabeus crater.
Elevated water-ice abundance in lunar polar regions was further supported by the neutron flux measurements performed by the Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector on board NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft.
Recently, the neutral mass spectrometer on NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer detected exospheric water liberated by meteoroid impacts, and ground-based telescope observations detected molecular water on the lunar surface.
Today, there is little doubt that most of the Moon’s surface harbors water in one form or another.
However, the origins of this water and its distribution and evolution during regolith gardening remain largely unknown, despite key implications for future lunar surface exploration and for better understanding the surface water reservoir and processing on solar system airless bodies.
“We proposed that impact glass beads, a ubiquitous component in lunar soils with an amorphous nature, are a potential candidate for investigation of the unidentified hydrated layer or reservoir in lunar soils,” said first author Huicun He, a doctoral student at the Key…
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