On the 26th of October SOFIA, NASA's largest flying observatory, detected small traces of water on the moon's sunlit surface. The traces of water were located in a crater of the moon's southern hemisphere, and are currently visible from Earth.
Scientists of NASA speculate that the amount of water on the moon is around 1 bottle of water per cubic meter and is found in a solid crystal-like form. This can help further investigations because water is an expensive and valuable resource on the moon. The water located does not make any puddles because the H2O molecules are spread apart and it is not that easy to find it or extract it.
NASA predicts that the water is formed by the impact of small meteorites that strike the moon or by the interaction of particles of energy from the sun. Furthermore, this investigation has led to theories conjecturing that the shadowed regions of the moon also have water particles and are distributed across the lunar surface.
However, the extraction of the water in crystal forms may be a dangerous action because the temperature of the moon can reach between -230°C and 120°C. "Without a thick atmosphere, water on the sunlit lunar surface should just be lost to space, yet somehow we're seeing it. Something is generating the water, and something must be trapping it there.” said Casey Honniball, one of the authors of a study about the discovery. NASA's Artemis mission plans on sending female and male astronauts to the moon in 2024 and Russia is also scheduling a mission in 2025, both want to investigate further about the new methods to extract water from the moon.
Andrea