Meteor showers dig up water on the moon
Water molecules released from the surface suggest water is buried in the moon’s soil
Meteor showers bring moon geysers. A lunar orbiter spotted extra water around the moon when the moon passed through streams of cosmic dust that can cause meteor showers on Earth.
The water was probably released from lunar soil by tiny meteorite impacts, planetary scientist Mehdi Benna of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and colleagues report April 15 in in Nature Geoscience. Those random impacts suggest water is buried all over the moon, rather than isolated in freezing dark craters — and that the moon has been wet for billions of years.