Exploring the lunar water cycle.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 39680773.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1073/pnas.2321065121 and PMC identifier 11670188.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The presence of water on the Moon has been indicated by various remote-sensing observations and analyses of returned samples. Several missions are planned to conduct new in situ research on the lunar surface to directly observe and characterize lunar water. A comprehensive characterization of the present forms of water, their abundance, spatial distribution, temporal variation, and possible origin is required to understand the lunar water cycle and the relevance of individual source and sink mechanisms and transformations between the involved volatile species. These processes extend over vastly different scales, and the governing parameters are often insufficiently constrained by experimental and observational data. Here, I present a brief overview of the current state of knowledge on the lunar water cycle, its relevance for lunar science and exploration, and some of the main challenges of modeling and future in situ analyses aiming to substantially advance the understanding of lunar water occurrences.