Don't drink the water

Abstract

If water exists in permanently shadowed terrain on the Moon as suggested by a number of investigators (Watson et al., 1961; Arnold, 1979; Hodges, 1980; Nozette et al., 1996; Duke and Whittaker, 1997) and strongly supported by the Lunar Prospector neutron flux measurements (Feldman et al., 1998), the results of studies on another volatile, namely Hg, are quite relevant. Whereas water has not been positively found, a large number of studies have established the presence of Hg in lunar samples. Its presence and volatile behavior are important when considering water as probably the most important in situ lunar resource. Here we show that the amount of Hg in lunar cold traps may be comparable to the amounts of water.