The Indian space probe Chandrayaan-1 discovered clusters of hematite (Fe2O3) – a mineral that is formed only in the presence of oxygen and water. This is reported in an article published September 2 in Science Advances.
The material says that hematite is common on Earth, Mars and some asteroids. Previously, scientists assumed that oxidative processes act on the lunar surface and form iron-containing minerals, but they could not draw unambiguous conclusions. There is no oxygen, liquid water, or hematite on the moon; in theory, there should not be an oxidation product either. In addition, the surface of the Moon is attacked by particles of the solar wind, which contains hydrogen, a powerful reducing agent. The Earth is protected from the solar wind by a magnetic field, the Moon does not.
However, after in 2008 the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) spectrometer on board Chandrayaan-1 found water in the form of ice in its polar regions on the Moon and scientists decoded the data obtained, American researchers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory saw spectral lines corresponding to iron oxide hematite (Fe2O3).
The source of oxygen, according to the researchers, was the Earth’s atmosphere. In 2007, the Japanese artificial lunar satellite Kaguya discovered that oxygen from the Earth’s upper atmosphere could travel “on the trailing tail of the magnetosphere,” reaching the Moon.
As they write in the article, the Moon gradually moves away from the Earth over time, and several billion years ago, when they were closer to each other, more oxygen reached the lunar surface.
The authors of the article note that water ice at the poles is not enough to explain the “riddle of hematite”, since iron oxide was found, including far beyond the ice clusters. Therefore, they proposed an alternative option – cosmic dust settling on the surface of the Moon, which itself can carry water molecules and release them from lunar rocks during shock interactions. Heat from impacts increases the rate of oxidation
As a result, scientists came to the conclusion that when the Moon was protected from the solar wind by the “tail” of the earth’s magnetosphere, which delivered oxygen, iron oxidation reactions could well take place on its surface with the formation of mineral rust.
Earlier, on August 29, it became known that Russian scientists will use sounding rockets to study microorganisms that can live in the earth’s stratosphere. Researchers are busy preparing a project to study the stratosphere and atmosphere up to 300 km. It is planned to take samples at different altitudes with the help of sounding rockets performing parabolic flights.