The moon rusts – thank you for the “wind” blown from the earth

The moon rusts – thank you for the “wind” blown from the earth

By Alexandra Witze & Nature Magazine

The moon rusts – and it is the fault of the earth.

Scientists have discovered that oxygen particles blown from earth to moon can transform lunar minerals into hematite, also called rust. The discovery adds to the growing understanding of researchers of the deep interconnection between the earth and the moon – and shows how the moon maintains a geological file of these interactions, explains Ziliang Jin, planetary scientist of the University of Sciences and Technologies of Macao in China. He and his colleagues reported their conclusions earlier this month Geophysical research letters.

Most of the time, the earth and the moon are bathed in a flow of charged particles emanating from the sun. But for about five days a month, the earth spends between the sun and the moon, blocking most of the floods of solar particles. Meanwhile, the Moon is exposed mainly to particles which were part of the atmosphere of the earth before blowing in space – a phenomenon known as the wind of the earth.

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This wind contains ions of various elements, including hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. When these loaded particles strike the moon, they can be established in the upper layers of the lunar soil and trigger chemical reactions.

In 2020, scientists reported that Chandrayaan-1’s mission of India had identified the hematite near the poles of the Moon. Hematite is a mineral rich in iron which can form when rocks react with water and oxygen. But the chemical environment of the moon is not conducive to the presence of oxygen, which means that oxygen for hematite could have arrived elsewhere. The authors of article 2020 proposed that he arrived in the wind of the earth.

Experimental support

Jin and his colleagues decided to test this idea in the laboratory. They simulated the wind of the earth by accelerating hydrogen and oxygen ions with high energies. They then sent the ions whistling in monocrystals of iron -rich minerals which are known to exist on the moon.

The pelting of minerals with high energy oxygen has transformed some of the crystals into hematite. And the pelting of hematite with hydrogen has brought back a iron part.

The results show that the moon undergoes many chemical and mineralogical changes when it goes through the wind of the earth every month, says Jin. Perhaps even more important, they show that oxygen in the earth can form hematite on the moon.

“It’s a great experience,” said Shuai Li, a planetary scientist from the University of Hawaii at M & Amacr; Noa, who led the team that discovered 2020. “It is a very wise design” which helps to disentangle the different factors that help create hematite on the moon.

Li says he would like to see a future mission bringing samples from lunar hematite, so that researchers can analyze oxygen and confirm that he returns to the earthly wind.

This article is reproduced with permission and was first publication September 22, 2025.

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