Lunar soils contain helium implanted as high energy ions from the solar wind, but not all soils grains retain helium equally. Better understanding of the helium retention could enable its use as resource for future lunar missions. In a new paper published in the scientific journal Communications Earth & Environment, Center Director Rhonda Stroud and her collaborators, Drs. Katherine Burgess and Brittany Cymes, recently revealed that nanophase metallic iron, long known to be a space weathering product, can be riddled with even tinier vesicles filled with solar wind helium.
Read more in “Helium reservoirs in iron nanoparticles on the lunar surface”, Communications Earth & Environment 5:189.
