Sep 03, 2020 21:00:00

It turned out that part of the moon was rusted by the wind blowing from the earth to the moon

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hematite containing iron oxide was discovered in the high latitudes of the Moon, a research team at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysical and Planetary Sciences (HIGP) announced. The research team explained that the reason why iron oxide was discovered in the moon, which should be oxygen-free, is that the moon's atmosphere was sprayed to oxidize the moon.

Widespread hematite at high latitudes of the Moon | Science Advances
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eaba1940

Has Earth's oxygen rusted the Moon for billions of years?
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-earth-oxygen-rusted-moon-billions.html

Iron is known as a metal that reacts very easily with oxygen, that is, it easily rusts. There are mainly two types of iron oxides existing in nature, iron oxide (II, III) and iron oxide (III) . The former is called 'black rust' and the latter is called 'red rust'. And the hematite discovered on the Moon is a mineral containing iron (III) oxide.

The moon has very little air and no oxygen to react with iron. As a result, iron has been discovered in lunar soil in the past, but iron oxide has never been discovered. Even if there was iron oxide, it was thought that the

solar wind that blows on the moon would be reduced to iron because it contains hydrogen.

However, when HIGP and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory analyzed the lunar hyperspectral data taken by Chandrayan 1 in India, it was discovered from samples once collected by the Apollo program and low latitude data. It was shown that hematite that did not exist was contained in soil in the high latitude zone.

According to the research team, the place where hematite exists is strongly correlated with latitude and water content, and it is found that it is always concentrated on the surface side of the moon facing the earth.

Increase of hematite in Shuai Lee said, 'the moon of HIGP deputy researcher a member of the research team, likely related to the Earth has been suggested. Japan's lunar orbit satellite' Kaguya from the data of the 'solar wind It was known that the Earth's upper atmosphere was being blown onto the Moon over the past billions of years, when the Moon was in the Earth's magnetotail , the Earth's upper atmosphere containing oxygen was blowing onto the Moon along with the solar wind. That is why there is a high possibility that hematite was born.”

However, according to Lee, there is a small amount of hematite on the back side of the moon, where the earth's oxygen should not reach. From this, it is possible that not only oxygen but also trace amounts of water and interplanetary dust in the moon may play an important role in the hematite formation process.

'This discovery will reshape our knowledge of the polar regions of the Moon. The Earth may have played a key role in the evolution of the Moon,' Lee said. The research team hopes that the manned lunar exploration mission ' Artemis Project ' will be able to retrieve hematite samples from high latitudes.