Water on the moon? New study narrows down the mostly likely locations
Why it matters: Future lunar explorers could mine this ice for drinking water or to produce rocket fuel by splitting hydrogen and oxygen atoms.
- Paul Hayne, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, notes that the moon's oldest craters contain the most ice, implying continuous water accumulation for 3 to 3.5 billion years.
- Oded Aharonson, lead author and planetary scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, emphasizes that finding usable water beyond Earth is a critical challenge in astronomy.
- NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), specifically its Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) instrument, provided observations in 2009 that hinted at ice in permanently shadowed 'cold traps' on the moon, though the distribution was uneven.
A new study published in Nature Astronomy suggests that water on the moon accumulated slowly over billions of years, rather than from a single catastrophic event, with the oldest craters holding the most ice. This finding, from an international team including Paul Hayne of the University of Colorado Boulder and lead author Oded Aharonson of the Weizmann Institute of Science, helps explain the patchy distribution of ice observed in permanently shadowed lunar craters.
