Original photo by Jean-Claude Caprara/ Shutterstock
If humans hope to one day colonize the moon, a few things are absolutely necessary for our survival. Chief among these necessities is water; we can’t live very long without it. Because Earth is nestled in the life-supporting comfort of our sun’s Goldilocks zone (not too hot, not too cold), water can be found on its surface in abundance — but what about the moon? In the late 2000s, various space missions discovered hydration on the moon, but it wasn’t clear if it was water or a related molecule called hydroxyl. In 2020, NASA finally confirmed that water is distributed across the lunar surface. But a potentially game-changing discovery arrived in 2023, after the Chinese Chang’e-5 lunar mission discovered that small glass spherules, also known as impact glasses or microtektites, contained H2O — possibly some 330 billion tons of it — on the lunar surface.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a fibWhile moon dust generally doesn’t smell like anything on Earth, Apollo astronauts specifically reported that it smelled like “burnt gunpowder,” likely the result of oxidation in the cabin of the lunar lander.
These water-filled beads are formed in a complex process of space chemistry that’s kick-started by meteorites slamming into the moon at hundreds of miles per hour. The spheres contain oxygen that reacts to ionized hydrogen in solar winds to form water. This is potentially a huge boon for future astronauts — whether NASA or otherwise — who hope to establish a moon base, as these widespread, water-filled spheres can be boiled and then cooled to extract potable water vapor. And so while the moon’s dull and lifeless surface may seem inhospitable to human habitation, with every new discovery, our celestial neighbor is looking more and more welcoming.
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The Chang’e-5 lunar mission is named for the Chinese ______.
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The Chang’e-5 lunar mission is named for the Chinese goddess of the moon.
The Earth goes through its own kind of lunar phases — but in reverse.
Since time immemorial, humans have been captivated by the phases of the moon. Ancient societies constructed entire calendars based on its 29.5-day-long cycles, and we’ve even given specific names to every full moon that occurs throughout the year — but these phases aren’t exclusive to Earth’s only satellite. When Apollo astronauts viewed the Earth from the moon, they experienced our terrestrial home’s own special mix of phases, but in reverse. So when earthlings experienced a full moon, astronauts saw a “new” Earth (and vice versa). Although Earth’s phases are similar to the moon’s — experiencing full, new, and all the various crescent shapes in between — there are some differences. The moon, for example, is tidally locked, so we always see the same lunar face. But the Earth isn’t similarly constrained, so it appears to any lunar inhabitants as a constantly changing orb. Also, because the moon orbits the Earth, it moves across our sky. But the Earth, when viewed from the moon, would appear to stay in the same spot. So in the far future — or even within the next decade — when future astronauts glimpse the Earth from their lunar space station, they’ll experience something both new and familiar.
Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.
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