Chinese scientists find traces of water in lunar soil brought by Chang'e-5 mission
Chinese scientists studying the soil samples of the moon brought by Chang'e-5 mission found water molecules in lunar soil, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The research — carried out jointly by researchers from the Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics and the Institute of Physics of CAS and other domestic research institutions — was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy on July 16, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.
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Based on lunar soil samples returned by Chang'e-5 mission in 2020, Chinese scientists have found a hydrated mineral «enriched» with molecular water, CAS said on Tuesday.
In 2009, India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft detected signs of hydrated minerals in the form of oxygen and hydrogen molecules in sunlit areas of the moon.
Among its suite of instruments, it carried NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), an imaging spectrometer that helped confirm the discovery of water locked in minerals on the Moon.
In 2020, Nasa announced the discovery of water on the sunlit surface of the moon based on data from the airborne Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, which detected water molecules in the Clavius crater, one of the largest craters visible from Earth, in the moon's southern hemisphere.
But the lack of returned lunar samples from high latitude and polar
