Apollo moon rock researchers say they have settled the debate over the moon’s magnetic field
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Lunar rocks collected by Apollo astronauts more than half a century ago are providing new insight into the Moon’s mysterious magnetic field, scientists reported Wednesday.
Even more clues should come from samples obtained by future moonwalkers in NASA’s new Artemis program.
Four Artemis astronauts, including Canadian Jeremy Hansen, are expected to fly around the moon in a key test flight that will lift off from Kennedy Space Center in early April after a delay of several weeks. Their Artemis II moon rocket and Orion spacecraft, originally targeted for launch in February, were removed from the launchpad and returned to NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building on Wednesday for repairs.
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford in England, shows that the Moon’s magnetic field has been weak during most of its existence, but during an extremely brief period three to four billion years ago it became stronger and even overtook Earth’s magnetic activity. their conclusions Published in Nature Geoscience magazine.
Magnetic fields also help protect against dangerous cosmic rays and, in the case of Earth, the Sun’s harsh radiation.
Lead author Claire Nicholls said the Moon had “incredibly short spikes in high magnetic field strength” that lasted no more than 5,000 years and possibly a few decades, the result of the melting of titanium-rich rocks within the Moon.
Scientists previously theorized that the lunar magnetic field remains strong for long periods of time, based on analysis of rocks brought back by the Apollo moonwalkers from 1969 to 1972. With the Artemis astronauts exploring the Moon’s southern polar region rather than the low-latitude lava plains of the Apollo days, the new samples should shed even more light on the Moon’s ancient magnetism.
Nichols and his team looked at earlier measurements of Apollo samples and found that high titanium levels matched preserved traces of high magnetic activity. The rocks of the first and last moon landings – Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 – were filled with titanium.
“We’ve found a missing link,” Nichols said in an email.
Magnetic field activity “may be intermittent and really strong and may fluctuate much more than we have traditionally thought.”
Researchers believe the Apollo samples are not representative of those found on the Moon because they came from similar locations where titanium was abundant after coming to the surface through volcanic eruptions.
Future Artemis astronauts plan to study ancient rocks near the south pole, where water ice is thought to reside in permanently shadowed craters.
“Understanding the history of the Moon’s magnetic shield is important for thinking about the habitability of planets,” Nichols said.
