NASA confirms there is water on the Moon: Who owns it and how can it be extracted?

It has been discovered that there could be almost 300 billion tons of water on the satellite

It has long been known that there is water on the moon, but almost nothing is known of its origin, storage or movement. Until now, thanks to a study by Chinese researchers who have discovered some small spheres in the lunar soil, which could be hiding places for water. This finding has been published in the magazine Nature.

It is estimated that there is huge amounts of water on the satellite: almost 300,000 million tons. This is believed from samples collected by China's Chang'e rover on its mission to the Moon. This probe already collected materials from there in December 2020.

This finding not only confirms suspicions that there is water on the Moon, but suggests that there is a quantity that was not even imagined. These glass beads are generated when pieces of space rock hit the surface of an object, vaporizing minerals that then cool into microscopic glassy particles. These beads hold hydration signatures and have abundant water. Each bead has up to 0.002 grams of particle mass water.

The diffusion time is believed to be less than 15 years at a temperature of 86°C, and a water recharge mechanism could be established that could sustain the water cycle on the Moon.

If this were proven, it would be vital to making more missions to the moon and would allow for longer periods of time there. This is what the Democratic senator, astronaut and administrator of the United States space agency (NASA), Bill Nelson, who has been in Madrid because Spain has joined the Artemis agreements, being the 25th signatory country, has been talking about. Nelson has attended at the U.S. Embassy to El Mundo and El Pais.

In these cooperative agreements, the foundation will be laid for peaceful space exploration of the Moon and other space bodies for decades to come.

"These are common sense principles, such as peaceful operation in space, of helping each other in times of danger and having a unified system, so that if someone has to rescue other astronauts, the spacecraft have compatible docking systems," the American commented.

"It is ruled out that someone could get to the Moon and claim territory and prevent others from entering. And here I am thinking of China and what it did in the Spratly Islands, in the China Sea. This territory was in international waters and China came in and claimed it for themselves; they started building airstrips. We want to prevent this kind of thing and that's why 25 countries have already signed on and there will probably be many more soon," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.