EUROPE: Water reserves found on the Moon are the result of asteroids acting as “delivery vehicles” and not of falling ice comets as was previously thought, a new study using computer simulation has found.
Scientists have discovered that a large asteroid can deliver more water to the lunar surface than the cumulative fall of comets over a billion year period.
Vladimir Svettsov from Institute for Dynamics of Geospheres and Valery Shuvalov from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in Russia, developed the most probable mechanism of water delivery to the Moon and an approximate “supply” volume, using computerised modelling of the fall of cosmic bodies onto the surface of the Moon.
The typical velocity of an ice comet ranges from 20 to 50 km per second. The estimates suggested that such a high impact velocity causes from 95 to 99.9 per cent of the water to evaporate into space beyond retrieve.
There is a family of short-period comets whose velocity of fall is much lower – 8-10 km per second. Such short-period comets account for about 1.5 per cent of lunar craters.
The simulation has shown that when these short-period comets do fall, almost all the water evaporates and less than 1 per cent of it remains at the impact point.
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