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From late 2013 to early 2014, a NASA mission called LADEE
explored the Moon's tenuous atmosphere and its dust
environment.
Now, LADEE's observations have led to a new discovery: the
lunar surface is periodically releasing water.
What we discovered is that the surface releases its water when
the Moon is bombarded by micrometeoroids.
This is especially noticeable during meteor showers.
What we also found is that the surface that's releasing the
water is being protected by a layer, a few centimeters of dry
soil that can only be breached by large micrometeoroids.
When micrometeoroids impact the surface of the Moon, most of the
material in the crater is vaporized.
There is also a shock wave that propagates outward.
That shock wave carries enough energy to release the water
that's coating the grains of the soil.
Most of that water will get released into space, and that's
the signature that LADEE detects with its instrument from its
orbit.
By analyzing the data returned by the neutral mass
spectrometer, we found that the intensity and the frequencies of
the fluctuations of signals from the water to be perfectly
correlated with known meteor streams.
For example, we were able to detect a big spike of water
during the Geminid meteor shower that occurred in December of
2013.
Thanks to LADEE, we now know that trace amounts of water are
widely distributed across the lunar surface.
This discovery provides a potential resource for future
exploration, and it improves our understanding the Moon's
geologic past and its continued evolution.
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