Four billion years ago, lava spilled onto the moon’s crust. For two billion years, volcanic eruptions have put water vapor into the space around the moon. In 2009, scientists confirmed that ice exists on the moon. Since then, researchers have debated the origin of that water. If it was on the moon, then it could have arrived on asteroids or comets. About 40 percent of the total water vapor created by volcanic eruptions could have settled into ice at the moon’s poles, a research team found. Over billions of years, some of this ice would have turned back to vapor and escaped into space. The researchers’ computer model predicts that today, ice deposits on the moon cover up to hundreds of square meters.
To reach the moon’s poles, volcanic water vapor would probably have to drift through the moon’s atmosphere. Its atmosphere would have let water molecules travel around the moon while keeping them from fleeing into space. If lunar ice started as water vapor from volcanos, that ice may retain a “memory” of that origin. Planetary scientists, Andrew Wilcoski and his colleagues at the University of Colorado at Boulder wanted to know if volcanos might be a source of that lunar ice. For that to happen, water vapor would have had to condense into ice faster than the vapor could have escaped from the moon. They published their findings in The Planetary Science Journal in May of 2022.
To reach the moon’s poles, volcanic water vapor would probably have to drift through the moon’s atmosphere. Its atmosphere would have let water molecules travel around the moon while keeping them from fleeing into space. If lunar ice started as water vapor from volcanos, that ice may retain a “memory” of that origin. Planetary scientists, Andrew Wilcoski and his colleagues at the University of Colorado at Boulder wanted to know if volcanos might be a source of that lunar ice. For that to happen, water vapor would have had to condense into ice faster than the vapor could have escaped from the moon. They published their findings in The Planetary Science Journal in May of 2022.