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    Earth's Atmosphere tagged posts

    Earth’s atmosphere may help support human life on the moon

    December 12, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Illustration of Earth, the sun, and the moon, with atmospheric particles flying about them to illustrate how lunar soil ended up with particles from Earth.
    FLY ME TO THE MOON: Solar wind (yellow-orange trails) strips ions from Earth’s upper atmosphere (sky-blue trails). Some of these particles travel along Earth’s magnetic field lines (solid white curves) and settle on the Moon’s surface. This process may leave lunar soil with a record of Earth’s atmosphere. (University of Rochester illustration / Shubhonkar Paramanick)

    The moon’s surface may be more than just a dusty, barren landscape. Over billions of years, tiny particles from Earth’s atmosphere have landed in the lunar soil, creating a possible source of life-sustaining substances for future astronauts. But scientists have only recently begun to understand how these particles make the long journey from Earth to the moon and how long the process has been taking place.

    New r...

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    Earth’s Atmosphere may be source of some Lunar Water

    April 29, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The image shows the distribution of surface ice at the moon’s south pole (left) and north pole (right), detected by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument in 2009. Blue represents the ice locations, and the gray scale corresponds to surface temperature. Photo courtesy of NASA

    Hydrogen and oxygen ions escaping from Earth’s upper atmosphere and combining on the moon could be one of the sources of the known lunar water and ice, according to new research by University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute scientists.

    The work led by UAF Geophysical Institute associate research professor Gunther Kletetschka adds to a growing body of research about water at the moon’s north and south poles.

    Finding water is key to NASA’s Artemis project, the planned long-term human presence o...

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