Kind: captions
Language: en
is there water on the moon the obvious
answer seems to be no because during a
day on the moon which lasts 2 Earth
weeks the temperature on the lunar
surface gets up to
123° C which would be enough to boil
away any water if the moon had an
atmosphere like Earth's which it doesn't
and the reason that it doesn't is
because the moon's gravity is weak just
a sixth of Earth's gravity which means
it can't hold on to light fast-moving
molecules like water anything going
faster than 2.4 km/s the moon's escape
velocity is gone now that might sound
pretty quick but at any given
temperature there are always a small
number of molecules going significantly
faster than the average on the moon
these molecules fly off into space and
then other molecules take their place
until all the light fast-moving
molecules are gone plus since the moon
has a very weak magnetic field there's
little to protect the lunar surface from
the solar wind that's the stream of
charged particles coming from the sun
these particles can effectively blast
molecules from the surface of the Moon
into space in fact that's how Mars lost
most of its atmosphere so in short if
the moon ever had any water it should be
long gone by now and this appeared to be
confirmed by The moonlandings Rock
samples brought back by Apollo
Astronauts contained virtually no
hydrated minerals some water was
detected but it was assumed just to be
terrestrial contamination rather than
actual Moon water because seals on some
of the sample return containers were
damaged by the gritty moondust but in
2009 a very different picture emerged
when scientists intentionally crashed
part of a rocket into the surface of the
Moon now it was going 2.5 km/s on impact
making a crater 25 M wide and 4 M deep
that ejected 10,000 tons of material
with half of it making it high enough to
be lit by the Sun that allowed cameras
on an orbiting spacecraft to look for
the emission lines of water in the dust
and what did they find well the water
emission lines were bright scientists
estimated that 5.6% the mass of the
ejected debris was water but how is this
possible where did the water come from
and how did it remain on the moon well
strangely enough there are actually
three different sources of lunar water
to understand the First Source you just
have to look at where they crashed that
rocket into the moon now it's a
misconception that the moon has a dark
side although the same side always faces
Earth all sides of the Moon do receive
sunlight however at the poles there are
some craters which due to their location
and depth are always in shade they're
called the permanently shadowed regions
now since they never see the sun these
craters are some of the coldest places
in the whole solar system colder than
the surface of Pluto they can reach -
249 C and it is here that scientists
decided to crash that piece of Rocket
since the permanently shattered regions
maintain such a consistently low
temperature they act as cold traps
places where volatiles like water remain
Frozen as ice but where would the water
come from in the first place well from
water containing comets and asteroids
that have struck the Moon Over time any
water molecules that found their way to
the permanently shadowed regions would
be trapped there forever as ice but this
is not the only source of water on the
moon in the lunar samples from Apollo 15
and 17 scientists found tiny glass beads
these beads were formed back when the
moon was still volcanically active fire
fountains launched droplets of lava into
space where they cooled rapidly and then
fell back to the surface in 2007 these
beads were sliced in half and tested for
water the results showed significant
amounts of water with concentrations
highest in the middle of the beads now
this indicates that the water must have
been trapped there during the initial
eruption rather than leeching in due to
contamination once those beads were back
on Earth now this water came from the
interior of the moon so the moon must
have contained water to begin with which
kind of makes sense considering the Moon
is likely a piece of Earth that broke
off billions of years ago in an impact
with a mars-sized body the third and
final source of water on the moon is
water created on the moon's surface from
the reaction of oxygen and hydrogen now
the source of oxygen is easy oxygen
makes up 45% of the lunar surface mostly
Bound in oxide minerals but where do you
get the free hydrogen the answer is in
the solar wind which is constantly
bombarding the moon's surface with
protons these can react with oxygen to
form hydroxide and ultimately water this
water can then drift over the surface of
the Moon until either it flies off into
space or it lands in the cold traps and
becomes ice so there is water on the
moon and this is important because it
means that future missions can take
advantage of this valuable resource not
only for Moon colonists to drink and
grow crops but also for processing into
Rocket Fuel if you can make your own
rocket fuel on the moon that
dramatically reduces the challenges and
costs of space travel for a long time we
used to think the moon was completely
dry but now we know that hypothesis is
all
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