"We traced these events, the meteoroid showers in the atmosphere, but it is not what surprised us. The scientists found that whenever the meteoroids hit the surface, apart from the dust particles that go into the atmosphere, there are also small droplets of water that comes on the surface. The scientists collected data about the exosphere or what they call the faint gases present in the atmosphere. The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer of NASA called the LADEE craft, has orbited the moon between October of 2013 up to October of 2014. This also shows that these water reserves come from the ancient times and that they are accessible only meters below the surface. These recent findings are providing support to further the hypothesis that there is indeed water reserves in the moon. The strikes have been infusing the lunar atmosphere with what experts call short-lived water vapor.Įvery time the tiny rocks hit the moon, they loosen up the surface matter all while its shockwaves liberate the stream of water from the hydrated layer of the moon just a little below the surface. They were found to be getting into the deeper part than just the surface of the moon. Small scale meteoroid strikes are almost constantly hitting the surface of the moon. The depths where the water was found were too shallow it would be easy enough access, according to the report recently released by NASA. "The water being lost is likely ancient, either dating back to the formation of the Moon or deposited early in its history," said Benna.There is water in the moon and it's hidden just below its surface. The analysis indicates that meteoroid impacts release water faster than it can be produced from reactions that occur when the solar wind hits the lunar surface. "We know that some of the water must be coming from the Moon, because the mass of water being released is greater than the water mass within the meteoroids coming in," said Dana Hurley of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The team ruled out the possibility that all of the water detected came from the meteoroids themselves. Meteoroid strikes can transport water both into and out of cold traps. These findings could help explain the deposits of ice in cold traps in the dark reaches of craters near the poles. About two-thirds of that vapour escapes into space, but about one-third lands back on the surface of the Moon. When a stream of meteoroids rains down on the lunar surface, the liberated water will enter the exosphere and spread through it. Since the material on the lunar surface is fluffy, even a meteoroid that is five millimetres across can penetrate far enough to release a puff of vapour. This concentration is much drier than the driest terrestrial soil. Researchers calculated that the hydrated layer has a water concentration of about 200 to 500 parts per million. Underneath this bone-dry top layer lies a thin transition layer, then a hydrated layer, where water molecules likely stick to bits of soil and rock, called regolith. To release water, the meteoroids had to penetrate at least eight centimetres below the surface, according to the study published in the journal Nature Geosciences.