Knowledge of the Moon's water unraveled by the Chang'e lunar soils

Water plays an important role in understanding the origin and evolution of the Moon, and is currently deemed as a potential in-situ resource for future lunar explorations. The newly returned samples collected by the Chang’e-5 (CE5) and -6 (CE6) missions provide precious opportunities to deepen the knowledge about the water of the Moon, from the interior to the surface and from the near side to the far side. The new return samples, CE5 and CE6 lunar soils, have an average grain size of ~50 μm with various components. The physical characteristics of these soil samples require an extremely high spatial-resolution analytical protocol for measuring the water content and hydrogen isotopes. NanoSIMS 50L is the best choice to carry out water and hydrogen isotope analyses for the tiny targets facilitated by the design of multi-collectors, nanometer beam sizes, and high vacuum quality. In this talk, we are going to present the novel soil sample preparation for NanoSIMS analysis, and the new knowledge of the Moon’s water learned from the new lunar return samples.