August 5, 2024 2:38 PM

Meteorite impacts identified as driver of moon’s tenuous atmosphere

The NASA astronauts who became the first people to land on the moon's surface in the 1960s and 1970s also discovered a previously unknown lunar characteristic - it has an atmosphere, though quite tenuous. Soil samples they retrieved are now revealing the main physical process driving this atmosphere. By analyzing which forms of two elements - potassium and rubidium - were present in nine tiny soil samples from five Apollo missions, researchers determined that the lunar atmosphere was created an...