Can Solar Wind Make Water on the Moon? A NASA Experiment Shows Maybe (space.com) 14
"Future moon astronauts may find water more accessible than previously thought," writes Space.com, citing a new NASA-led experiment:
Because the moon lacks a magnetic field like Earth's, the barren lunar surface is constantly bombarded by energetic particles from the sun... Li Hsia Yeo, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, led a lab experiment observing the effects of simulated solar wind on two samples of loose regolith brought to Earth by the Apollo 17 mission... To mimic conditions on the moon, the researchers built a custom apparatus that included a vacuum chamber, where the samples were placed, and a tiny particle accelerator, which the scientists used to bombard the samples with hydrogen ions for several days.
"The exciting thing here is that with only lunar soil and a basic ingredient from the sun — which is always spitting out hydrogen — there's a possibility of creating water," Yeo said in a statement. "That's incredible to think about." Supporting this idea, observations from previous moon missions have revealed an abundance of hydrogen gas in the moon's tenuous atmosphere. Scientists suspect that solar-wind-driven heating facilitates the combination of hydrogen atoms on the surface into hydrogen gas, which then escapes into space. This process also has a surprising upside, the new study suggests. Leftover oxygen atoms are free to bond with new hydrogen atoms formed by repeated bombardment of the solar wind, prepping the moon for more water formation on a renewable basis.
The findings could help assess how sustainable water on the moon is, as the sought-after resource is crucial for both life support and as propellant for rockets. The team's study was published in March in the journal JGR Planets .
NASA created a fascinating animation showing how water is released from the Moon during meteor showers. (In 2016 scientists discovered that when speck of comet debris vaporize on impact, they create shock waves in the lunar soil which can sometimes breach the dry upper layer, releasing water molecules from the hydrated layer below...)
"The exciting thing here is that with only lunar soil and a basic ingredient from the sun — which is always spitting out hydrogen — there's a possibility of creating water," Yeo said in a statement. "That's incredible to think about." Supporting this idea, observations from previous moon missions have revealed an abundance of hydrogen gas in the moon's tenuous atmosphere. Scientists suspect that solar-wind-driven heating facilitates the combination of hydrogen atoms on the surface into hydrogen gas, which then escapes into space. This process also has a surprising upside, the new study suggests. Leftover oxygen atoms are free to bond with new hydrogen atoms formed by repeated bombardment of the solar wind, prepping the moon for more water formation on a renewable basis.
The findings could help assess how sustainable water on the moon is, as the sought-after resource is crucial for both life support and as propellant for rockets. The team's study was published in March in the journal JGR Planets .
NASA created a fascinating animation showing how water is released from the Moon during meteor showers. (In 2016 scientists discovered that when speck of comet debris vaporize on impact, they create shock waves in the lunar soil which can sometimes breach the dry upper layer, releasing water molecules from the hydrated layer below...)
Re: (Score:2)
Meanwhile, China plans things 100 years out. It's obvious the next human on the moon will be Chinese. The US government simply can't do these types projects any more, competently.
Re:China will tell us (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair NASA is on track to land on the moon, their date is 2027 so probably 2028 but the equipment for the next 2 Artemis mission is being constructed right now and some of it is done. Yes SLS is too expensive and throwing rockets away is very, not with the times but there's no real evidence that it doesn't work, it performed as expected the first mission, so Congress really just has to keep it funded and there's a genuine 2.0 moon race.
I think it helps to remember too that NASA really doesn't "build" most of this stuff anyway. Artemis includes all the USA classics. Boeing buids the rocket, Aerojet the engineers, Northrop the boosters, Lockheed the capsule, The Europeans and Airbus build the service module and the astronauts would walk onto the moon off of a SpaceX landing ship. It's a classic American contractor smorgasbord and sometimes that's OK.
Re: (Score:1)
It's a classic American contractor smorgasbord and sometimes that's OK.
I hope the Americans take enough duct tape with then on that trip. Otherwise they might not be able to dock at that metric pile of shit!
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The Chinese moon landing is planned for 2030.
They are training their Taikonauts already.
Leftover Oxygen? (Score:4, Interesting)
TFA is unclear.
Where does the "leftover Oxygen" come from?
Re:Leftover Oxygen? (Score:5, Informative)
The full paper (link in the summary) says high energetic protons irradiate matter which creates dangling bonds in oxygen atoms. The paper plain language summary says: "Widespread OH/H2O has been detected across the lunar surface, but its origin remains a matter of active investigation. We present laboratory measurements of Apollo-17 samples that show the formation of OH/H2O during irradiation by energetic hydrogen plasma similar to the solar wind."
Re: (Score:2)
The solar wind, at our distance from the sun, produces a pressure on the order of a few nanopascals. I don't think that's enough to make it worth building a wind farm on the moon.
Radiation pressure from sunlight has been studied as a means of propelling spacecraft using solar sails. I'm not sure whether that could be used to turn a windmill, but it's silly to do so when you could just use a solar panel.
Not such a hard mistress after all (Score:2)
Water is pretty cool on the moon, but it needs more carbon.
water collector (Score:2)
The solar wind is a loose plasma of protons and electrons that move at a million miles per hour. Their benchtop experiment suggests that when it hits lunar soil it makes a little water. But I am seeing there was already evidence of this several years ago;
https://science.nasa.gov/sun/w... [nasa.gov]
"When this electric breeze blasts into lunar rocks, it can break atomic bonds and create water. In 2020, NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) mission discovered water created this way on the
Napkin math (Score:2)
Both the high and low speed winds produce a proton flux of 3 × 10^8 protons cm2 sec1 at 1 AU.
Assuming you can collect every proton that hits your surface, and that it's perfectly perpendicular to the sun (which won't be true on a rotating Moon), you could get 1 liter of H2O per 4.64 km^2 and 24 hours. Seems expensive.
3*10^12 protons / m^2 * s.
1 mole of water is 6.022*10^23 molecules, so 12.044*10^23 protons.
We assume we get the electrons for free.
1 mole of water is 18 mL.
So to gather 1 liter, we'd need 12.044*10^23 / 3*10^12 m^2 s
= 401,466,666,666 m^2 s
= 401