Lunar South Polar Water Cycle and Water Resources: Diurnal and Spatial Variations in Surficial Hydration From Repeated Moon Mineralogy Mapper Observations

Abstract The diurnal variation and distribution of lunar surficial hydration (OH/H2O) is of great significance for understanding the solar wind implantation and water cycle on the Moon. Lunar south pole is an ideal place to study the diurnal variation of surficial hydration due to the large number o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Main Authors: Yu Lu, Wenwen Wang, Hengyue Jiao, Tianyi Xu, Xuejiao Chen, Yunzhao Wu
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2024
Subjects:
lunar south pole
hydration
diurnal variation
spatial distribution
temperature
Geophysics. Cosmic physics
QC801-809
South pole
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL107499
https://doaj.org/article/75bd9174619543d39566b7b071276dda
Description
Summary:Abstract The diurnal variation and distribution of lunar surficial hydration (OH/H2O) is of great significance for understanding the solar wind implantation and water cycle on the Moon. Lunar south pole is an ideal place to study the diurnal variation of surficial hydration due to the large number of repeat observations of the same region, which is very limited in mid‐ or low‐latitudes. Here we showed clear 0.5‐hr interval diurnal variation of surficial hydration at lunar south pole. The variation of hydration band depth with local time is exactly the opposite to the variation of temperature, indicating that lunar surficial hydration changes sufficiently with temperature. This relationship indicates that both the diurnal variation and hydration content are latitude dependent. Our observations support the hypothesis that the diurnal variation of hydration on the Moon is due to the formation of metastable hydroxyl.

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