Evidence of water on the lunar surface from Chang’E-5 in-situ spectra and returned samples

Jianjun Liu, Bin Liu, Xin Ren, Chunlai Li (), Rong Shu (), Lin Guo, Songzheng Yu, Qin Zhou, Dawei Liu, Xingguo Zeng, Xingye Gao, Guangliang Zhang, Wei Yan, Hongbo Zhang, Lihui Jia, Shifeng Jin, Chunhua Xu, Xiangjin Deng, Jianfeng Xie, Jianfeng Yang, Changning Huang, Wei Zuo, Yan Su, Weibin Wen and Ziyuan Ouyang
Additional contact information
Jianjun Liu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Bin Liu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xin Ren: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Chunlai Li: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Rong Shu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Lin Guo: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Songzheng Yu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Qin Zhou: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Dawei Liu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xingguo Zeng: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xingye Gao: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Guangliang Zhang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Wei Yan: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Hongbo Zhang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Lihui Jia: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Shifeng Jin: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Chunhua Xu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xiangjin Deng: Beijing Institute of Spacecraft System Engineering
Jianfeng Xie: Beijing Aerospace Control Center
Jianfeng Yang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Changning Huang: China Academy of Space Technology
Wei Zuo: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yan Su: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Weibin Wen: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Ziyuan Ouyang: Chinese Academy of Sciences

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract The distribution range, time-varying characteristics, and sources of lunar water are still controversial. Here we show the Chang’E-5 in-situ spectral observations of lunar water under Earth’s magnetosphere shielding and relatively high temperatures. Our results show the hydroxyl contents of lunar soils in Chang’E-5 landing site are with a mean value of 28.5 ppm, which is on the weak end of lunar hydration features. This is consistent with the predictions from remote sensing and ground-based telescopic data. Laboratory analysis of the Chang’E-5 returned samples also provide critical clues to the possible sources of these hydroxyl contents. Much less agglutinate glass contents suggest a weak contribution of solar wind implantation. Besides, the apatite present in the samples can provide hydroxyl contents in the range of 0 to 179 ± 13 ppm, which shows compelling evidence that, the hydroxyl-containing apatite may be an important source for the excess hydroxyl observed at this young mare region.

Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30807-5 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-30807-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30807-5

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().