The Moon Has a Mysterious Atmosphere And We Finally Know Its Source

Exactly how the Moon sustains that diffuse shell of gasses has been something of a puzzle. Earth’s magnetic field acts as a confining influence its atmosphere, but the Moon has nothing of the sort, so its exosphere should have been stripped away by solar activity long ago.It’s clear the Moon’s deplenishing gasses are constantly being topped up, and now scientists have discovered the source of that replenishment. Tiny micrometeorites, barely the size of grains of dust, are constantly smacking into the lunar surface, kicking up and vaporizing lunar dust, and releasing atoms into the space around the Moon.

“We give a definitive answer that meteorite impact vaporization is the dominant process that creates the lunar atmosphere,” says geochemist Nicole Nie of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).