Solar Wind Manufacturing of Water on the Moon: An Ongoing NLSI Discussion

In 2009, the scientific view of the Moon made a dramatic change with the discovery of water in large concentrations (5%wt) within polar craters and water/OH in smaller surficial amounts at mid-latitudes. A body which was thought to be inert and dry is now suspected to be dynamic and mildly hydrated, with the suggestion that water might even be manufactured by solar wind/regolith interactions. At the time, NASA's Lunar Science Institute had a number of teams already integrated into the organization to study the harsh lunar environment and surface interactions, and a number of the team members collected together to investigate the possibility of a solar wind exogenous source for the water/OH. We will review the activity of the team members, including their work on the modeling of possible equatorial and polar water sources, the expected exospheric state, the effect of the extreme lunar temperature swings on water residency times, and how these models can feed forward to a future exospheric mission to the Moon: The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE).