"Most of the time, both Earth and the Moon are bathed in a stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun. But for around five days each month, Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon, blocking most of the flood of solar particles. During that time, the Moon is exposed mainly to particles that had been part of Earth's atmosphere before blowing into space a phenomenon known as Earth wind."
"In 2020, scientists reported that India's Chandrayaan-1 mission had spotted haematite near the Moon's poles. Haematite is an iron-rich mineral that can form when rocks react with water and oxygen. But the Moon's chemical environment isn't conducive to the presence of oxygen, meaning that the oxygen for the haematite might have arrived from somewhere else. The authors of the 2020 paper proposed that it might have arrived in the Earth wind."
Oxygen-rich ions from Earth periodically reach the Moon during intervals when Earth blocks solar wind, a phenomenon called Earth wind. Those ions include hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen and can implant into the upper layers of lunar soil. Implanted oxygen can oxidize iron-bearing lunar minerals to form haematite, an iron-rich mineral typically produced by reactions with water and oxygen. Haematite deposits were observed near the lunar poles by Chandrayaan-1 in 2020. Laboratory simulations reproducing Earth wind conditions show that oxygen implantation can produce haematite on the Moon, indicating the Moon preserves a geological record of Earth–Moon interactions.
Read at www.nature.com
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