A new investigation into rust on the Moon implicates Earth as the culprit. Oxygen leaking out of Earth is likely responsible for the transformation of iron to hematite (Fe 2 O 3) at the lunar poles.

I grew up with the idea that the Moon was a dry, airless rock where metal simply sat unchanged for billions of years. The discovery of actual iron rust in lunar soil has blown a hole in that picture, ...

When the Artemis program returns humans to the lunar surface, astronauts may want to make sure they’re up to date on their tetanus shots. The Moon is covered in rust. In 2020, data from India’s ...

The Moon, long thought to be a barren and unchanging celestial body, is now showing a surprising and puzzling phenomenon: rusting. Scientists have recently discovered that oxygen particles from Earth ...

For more than half a century, scientists pictured the Moon as an almost fully reduced world where iron stayed locked in low-oxygen states. That idea came from Apollo samples, which showed that solar ...

Tiny iron oxide grains found in lunar soil samples brought by the Chinese Chang’e-6 mission upend what was known about the Moon’s surface and magnetic properties, scientists revealed in a new study.

Oxygen isotope analysis of lunar soil shows meteorites delivered only a limited amount of water to the Earth–Moon system ...

Particles from Earth’s atmosphere have been carried into space by solar wind and have been landing on the moon for billions of years, mixing into the lunar soil, according to a new study. The research ...