Particles carried from Earth’s poles via our planet’s magnetosphere could be interacting with lunar rocks to create small quantities of water on the moon.

When the particles penetrate at least 3 inches (8 cm) into the surface, the shock of impact liberates water molecules attached to minerals in deeper soil not exposed to direct sunlight.

Protons (hydrogen) in the wind bonds with oxygen in lunar soil to make water.

The sun also helps distill dribs and drabs of moon water when protons in the solar wind crash into the lunar surface and bond with oxygen atoms in minerals to make H2O.

In a new study, a team of scientists discovered that an “Earth wind” of ionized atoms blowing from the polar regions can interact with lunar soil and rocks to make water molecules.

Energized by interactions with the solar wind, some of the ionized atoms and molecules in the planet’s polar atmosphere shoot off into space where they’re trapped by Earth’s magnetic field, better known as the magnetosphere.

The magnetosphere deflects the solar wind, preventing the sun’s protons from ginning up fresh water on the lunar surface.

With the moon cut off from its supply, astronomers assumed that lunar water formed by solar bombardment would quickly fizzle away into space, and the moon would emerge from its temporary magnetic shelter all the drier.

Water levels remained nearly the same each time the moon exited the magnetosphere.

Additional evidence came from the Japanese Kaguya lunar orbiter, active in the early 2000s, which detected scads of positively charged oxygen atoms at the moon each time it hid in the shadow of Earth’s magnetic tail.

How amazing to think that ionic breezes from the Earth may help coat the lunar surface with life-giving water potentially beneficial to future astronauts.

Source: Earth Wind as a Possible Exogenous Source of Lunar Surface Hydration.