Johns Hopkins APL assembles first global map of lunar hydrogen
Using data collected more than two decades ago, scientists from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, have compiled the first complete map of hydrogen abundance on the Moon’s surface. The map identifies two types of enhanced hydrogen-containing lunar material and corroborates previous ideas about lunar hydrogen and water, including the finding that water likely played a role in the formation and solidification of the Moon’s native ocean-magma. David Lawrence, Patrick Peplowski and Jack Wilson of APL, along with Rick Elphic of NASA’s Ames Research Center, used orbital neutron data from the Lunar Prospector mission to create their map. The probe, deployed by NASA in 1998, orbited the Moon for a year and a half and sent back the first direct evidence of an increase in hydrogen at the lunar poles, before hitting the lunar surface. When a star explodes, it releases cosmic rays, or high-energy protons and neutrons that travel through space at nearly the sp