Lunar soil samples brought to Earth by China's Chang’e-5 mission include tiny beads containing water particles
A screen shows footage from the Chang'e-5 mission, during an event on China’s lunar exploration programme, at the National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, China, January 18 2021. Picture: TINGSHU WANG/REUTERS
“The moon is constantly bombarded with impactors — for example micrometeoroids and large meteoroids — which produce impact glass beads during high-energy flash-heating events,” said planetary scientist Sen Hu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geology and Geophysics, a co-author of the study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
“Solar wind-derived water is produced by the reaction of solar hydrogen with oxygen present at the surface of the lunar glass beads,” Hu said, with these spheres then acting sort of like a sponge for the water. The researchers see promise in obtaining water from the glass beads, perhaps through a heating process to release vapour that would then turn into liquid through condensation.
The capsule returning the soil samples to Earth landed in the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia.
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