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Moon Science Technology

Scientists Found Rust on the Moon (vice.com) 66

Posted by msmash from the unravelling-mysteries dept.
Rust requires oxygen, water, and the right conditions, all of which the Moon lacks. So where did a newly discovered iron oxide come from? Earth is one possibility. From a report: Contrary to what was thought to be a scientific impossibility, scientists detected rust -- a product that requires oxygen, water, and oxidative conditions -- on the surface of the Moon, a famously oxygen-poor, liquid water-less, and reducing environment that prohibits oxidation. The scientists speculated that the oxygen needed for the reaction that forms rust had been carried to the poles of the Moon by wind from the Earth, and a paper detailing the discovery was published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Rust is the reddish-brown material left behind when iron atoms react with oxygen and water in what is known as an oxidizing, or electron-losing, reaction. The Moon's very thin atmosphere does not trap much oxygen, and solar winds constantly blast the surface of the Moon with charged hydrogen, causing it to have highly reducing, or electron-gaining, conditions.

So while rust is common on Earth, its discovery on the Moon caught researchers by surprise. "I don't think anyone expected this on the Moon's surface," said Shaui Li, the first author of the paper and a researcher at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. "This is basic chemistry -- we all know that the lunar surface is highly reducing, so there is no reason you would be able to see a high-valence iron like hematite." By comparing reflectance data collected by the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission to pure samples of rust, Li's group identified material at latitudes above 60 degrees on the Moon's surface as hematite, or iron (III) oxide. Li said that the comparison was fairly straightforward, and he is very confident that the reflectance spectra were of hematite.
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Scientists Found Rust on the Moon

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  • A rusty landing leg? Rust flakes off all the time...

  • All we have to FeO is FeO itself (Score:3)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Thursday September 03, 2020 @08:21PM (#60471238)

    We know that oxygen compounds abound on the Moon, but there must be some process liberating oxygen somewhere on or near the surface.

  • They're really pushing it, aren't they? (Score:5, Funny)

    by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Thursday September 03, 2020 @08:35PM (#60471288) Homepage Journal

    First Mozilla
    Then the kernel (maybe)
    Now the moon?

  • Headline:

    Rust on the moon. Mozilla run by aliens. C++ humanities best hope?

  • Earth wind?! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Thursday September 03, 2020 @08:57PM (#60471350)

    I don't doubt it's rust but I have a hard time believing that there was enough "loose air" thrown off the earth that did NOT get pulled back to Earth but somehow enough of it made its way to the moon to cause detectable rust.

    I'd go with underground water/moisture.

    • The moisture is a journalist's addition of red herring to the dish.

      Yes, there should be oxygen "spalled" off Earth's atmosphere by solar radiation, and thus impacting the Moon. And the distribution (equator-facing & east-facing sites, see the abstract link I posted a few minutes ago) is what you'd expect for that. *But*, there should also be comparable if not larger amounts of hydrogen spelled off the Earth's atmosphere, which would counteract the oxidizing ability of such a flow from the Earth. So ...

      • Is there rust on the dark side of the moon? That would answer it.

        • I'm sure you mean the far side of the Moon, which is almost precisely as dark (in terms of incident radiation, not albedo) as the Moon's near side.

          Umm, [reads full paper]. The mapping is more-or-less global - it's fairly hard to confine a satellite's field of view to one hemisphere :

          The Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) onboard the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission was a VNIR imaging spectrometer that collected reflectance data between 0.46 and 2.98 ïm at spectral resolutions of 20 to 40 nm and spatial resolutio

    • I have a hard time believing [...] but somehow enough of it made its way to the moon

      You would be mistaken. Earth's outer atmosphere extends way beyond the moon [earthsky.org]

  • rust -- a product that requires oxygen, water, and oxidative conditions

    and iron.

    The moon has plenty of iron. Still, just sayin'...

    • How did you get the idea that the Moon has plenty of iron? The Moon's paucity of iron and near- or complete- lack of an iron core (see data from seismic sensors at the Apollo sites and some other landing sites) while sharing an isotopic composition with Earth rocks remains one of the principle constraints on modelling the early history of the Earth-Moon system. Giant impact then synestia ; or impact, debris disk then Moon assembly ; or what? Half a century after doing the field trips, the question remains a

      • Right here [wikipedia.org].

        • And if you'd read around the subject a bit (heretical, I know), you'd find that the Moon is acknowledged to be low in iron compared to the other rocky planets [wikipedia.org]. Which is a definite problem for forming it.

          • If you had read the very Wikipedia article you link to (heretical, I know), you'd have seen this:

            In 2010, a reanalysis of the old Apollo seismic data on the deep moonquakes using modern processing methods confirmed that the Moon has an iron rich core

            Also this a bit further up:

            the lunar mantle is more iron-rich than that of the Earth

            Finally, nobody's talking about the core. Scientists aren't observing rust in the core, but at the surface.

            Frankly, I don't even know why I bother replying...

  • Rust is the reddish-brown material left behind when iron atoms react with oxygen and water

    Obligatory Nicolas Cage meme t-shirt on Nicolas Cage meme [pinimg.com].

  • The Moon Nazis have been neglecting their base maintenence again.

  • Looks like we'll have to paint it before it gets worse. I'm thinking off-white.

  • It's a space station... obviously.

  • Here I was afraid they'd find JavaScript or.... Visual Basic *Shudder*
  • Read the actual paper. Rust implies that here was elemental iron reacting with oxygen no mention of elemental iron oxidizing in the presence of water. Rust is also usually a mix of various polymorphs of Fe2O3 (often hydrated). The paper only mentions hematite.

  • Probably hasn't been lubed in ages.

    • Probably hasn't been lubed in ages.

      WD-40 is almost entirely solvent and water-repellant alkanes. There's very little in it that can be called a lubricant.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

        Probably hasn't been lubed in ages.

        WD-40 is almost entirely solvent and water-repellant alkanes. There's very little in it that can be called a lubricant.

        Man you're right. I keep running into this when teaching about Gun cleaning. People use WD-40 on their barrels and other metal parts and wonder why they rust and don't work right. Once I explain it they know how to use it properly. WD-40 is great at what it was designed for - water displacement.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by marcle ( 1575627 )

          Probably hasn't been lubed in ages.

          WD-40 is almost entirely solvent and water-repellant alkanes. There's very little in it that can be called a lubricant.

          Man you're right. I keep running into this when teaching about Gun cleaning. People use WD-40 on their barrels and other metal parts and wonder why they rust and don't work right. Once I explain it they know how to use it properly. WD-40 is great at what it was designed for - water displacement.

          Thanks! I been edumacated.

  • The Apollo missions and various probes that were sent to the moon may have been the cause.

    I find it very hard to believe that the winds on Earth would be enough to propel dust very far out of the Earth's atmosphere if it can at all, let alone the dust being able to break orbit and float to the moon, all while not dissipating along the way to the point of being undetectable when it does land.

    One question remains is how did any of the landers or probes carry enough rust on their surfaces to deposit a

  • Moo (Score:1)

    by kvutza ( 893474 )
    Mozilla, Moon, ... apparently anything starting with "mo" gets Rust, you morons. I wonder when cows' moo will get it too. May be I should start to learn it if it'll bring money.

  • The discussion section at the end of the paper is pretty interesting.
    https://advances.sciencemag.or... [sciencemag.org]

    tldr:
    They found hematite (rust) on the Moon but why it is there is still in the hypothesis stage.
    - Iron from igneous basalt. The hematite is probably micron-sized particles.
    - Oxygen from plasma of Earth's atmosphere -- the Japanese Kaguya mission shows it is plausible, and the paper calculates it would be sufficient amount. Also oxygen is liberated from the Moon's surface from constant bombardment byb micro

  • Damn, I came here to post a joke about Go to the Moon, but all the other language jokes already posted are much better.

  • Can't believe we found it. But there it was right between Java and Go.

    Who knew? But this may end Oracle's attempt at exclusive rights over the Moon.
  • When we leave things out in the elements they just get all wrecked.

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