Astronauts from NASA who became the first people to set foot on the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s also discovered a lunar feature: it has an atmosphere, although it is very tenuous. Soil samples they collected are now revealing the main physical process that creates such an atmosphere.
By analyzing which forms of potassium and rubidium are present in nine small soil samples from five Apollo missionso, researchers determined that the lunar atmosphere was created and is sustained primarily by the effects of meteorites, large and small, that hit its surface.
“Meteorite impacts generate high temperatures, ranging from 2,000ºC to 6,000ºC. These extreme temperatures melt and vaporize rocks on the lunar surface, just as heat vaporizes water, releasing atoms into the atmosphere,” said MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) planetary scientist and cosmochemist Nicole Nie, lead author of a study published this Friday. this Friday (2) in the journal Science Advances.
A lunar atmosphere it is extremely thin and is technically classified as an exosphere. This means that atoms do not collide with each other, because their quantity is very sparse, unlike what occurs in the dense and stable Earth’s atmosphere.
“The Apollo missions took instruments to the lunar surface, which detected atoms in the air,” he said.
The Moon has been constantly bombarded by meteorites. At the beginning of its history, large meteorites left visible craters on its surface. More recently, meteorites are smaller, including some the size of dust.
Some of the atoms released by these impacts go into space. The rest remains suspended above the surface, in an atmosphere that is regularly replenished as more meteorites fall.
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