A new study warns that the surge in lunar exploration could rapidly contaminate the Moon’s most scientifically precious sites, potentially obscuring clues about the origins of life on Earth.
Simulations show that methane exhaust from a single lander could spread from pole to pole in less than two lunar days, with over half of it settling in the very regions that may hold pristine organic material billions of years old.
Published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, the research modeled the spread of methane – a primary exhaust component from many landers – from a hypothetical South Pole landing.
It was found that within seven lunar days (about seven Earth months), 42% of the methane became trapped at the South Pole and 12% at the North Pole. As with Earth, the poles are effectively deep-freezers, where scientists hope to find ancient, unaltered ‘prebiotic’ molecules delivered by asteroids.
Silvio Sinibaldi, Planetary Protection Officer at the European Space Agency and the study’s senior author explained: ‘We are trying to protect science and our investment in space. The moon is a natural laboratory ripe for new discoveries, but, paradoxically, our activity can actually hinder scientific exploration.’
The rapid spread occurs because the Moon has virtually no atmosphere to slow molecules down.
Lead author Francisca Paiva, a physicist at Instituto Superior Técnico. said: ‘Their trajectories are basically ballistic. They just hop around from one point to another. We showed that molecules can travel across the whole moon. In the end, wherever you land, you will have contamination everywhere.’
This poses a direct threat to one of the Moon’s greatest scientific values: its preserved record of the early solar system. Earth’s dynamic geology has erased traces of its original organic building blocks, but the Moon’s cold, inactive poles may have safeguarded them. Finding these molecules could help scientists understand how life began.
‘We know we have organic molecules in the solar system – in asteroids, for example,’ Sinibaldi said. ‘But how they came to perform specific functions like they do in biological matter is a gap we need to fill.’
Exhaust contamination risks burying that pristine evidence under a layer of modern pollution, a problem that will be exacerbated by the dozens of missions planned for the coming decade.
The researchers emphasise that understanding this process is the first step toward mitigation. Colder landing sites might better localise contamination, and future missions could carry instruments to validate the models.
Sinibaldi said: ‘I want to bring this discussion to mission teams, because, at the end of the day, it’s not theoretical – it’s a reality that we’re going to go there.’
Paiva added: ‘We have laws regulating contamination of Earth environments like Antarctica and national parks. I think the moon is an environment as valuable as those.’
Read the full research here.
Photo: Unsplash
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