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A new study, published Monday in the journal nature geoscienceshows that a team of Chinese scientists, led by Sen Hu, have just found a new water reservoir on the Moon.
The mission, dubbed “Chang’e 5 (CE5)”, has discovered evidence of a 270 billion-tonne reservoir of water that is trapped within the Moon’s “glass pearls”, which formed over the course of the meteorite impacts and act as reservoirs for water derived from the solar wind.
Sen Hu, a professor at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, comments on these findings:
These findings indicate that impact glasses on the surface of the Moon and other airless bodies in the solar system are capable of storing water derived from the solar wind and releasing it later into space. The most interesting of all this is that the water that is locked in the lunar crystals has been generated by the Sun.senhu
How did they collect samples from the phantom water reservoir on the Moon?
the probe «Chang’e 5 (CE5)» landed very close to Mount Rümker, an isolated volcano located in the northwestern part of the near side of the Moon. Thanks to the creation of this ship, Chinese scientists used a robotic arm to extract samples, package them and send them to the orbital module that was flying over the Moon.
After one lunar day, which is equivalent to 14 days on Earth, the probe «Chang’e 5 (CE5)» returned to our planet with the samples they took on the Moon. This discovery represents a true milestone, since it is the first samples collected on the Moon after the Soviet mission “Lunik 24”, carried out in 1976.
A very important discovery for future space exploration missions
The materials are composed of small impact glasses that contain small amounts of water inside. According to analyzes carried out by According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, these crystals formed during the last 2 billion years.
It is China’s first sample return mission, a very important discovery for future exploration missions in space. Scientists think that there are water reserves, which have not yet been discovered, that have the capacity to cushion the water cycle on the surface of the Moon.
Sen Hu points out the following regarding future space exploration missions:
For future manned missions, this may be an alternative source of water. The way to extract it would be to collect lunar soil, heat it in an oven at 100 degrees and capture the resulting steam.senhu
After this important discovery carried out by a group of Chinese scientists, the European Space Agency (ESA) intends to send a new probe to the Moon in the year 2026, whose objective will be to drill into the lunar soil to collect new samples.
Sources: Editorial Ambientum, abc, THE COUNTRY
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