By 
September 24th, 2025
China’s Chang’e-6 lander/ascender in farside sampling scenery.
Image credit: CNSA/CLEP
An international team of researchers from China, along with collaborators from the University of Hawaii, have used China’s Chang’e-6 lunar lander data to probe water distribution on Moon.
The research highlights the roles of solar wind and impact-driven gardening in the formation and evolution of lunar surface water.
Lander plume
Analyzing data from the Chang’e-6 landing site, the scientists found that areas disturbed by plumes generated by the lander display distinct temperature and water-content patterns, driven by the redistribution of fine regolith.
Image credit: Bin Liu , et al.
According to the team, lunar lander plumes displace and expose millimeter to centimeter-sized regolith during descent, providing the opportunity to study subsurface water.
Their work has been just published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Landing site water content differences
The average water content at the Chang’e-6 landing site in 2024 is, on average, notably higher (roughly twice the content) than that at the Chang’e-5 landing site in 2020.
Map of Rümker region, target of Chang’E-5 sample return mission. Credit: Y. Qian, et al.
“The above difference in the water contents could be interpreted as being due to correlations with the glass contents, particle sizes, depths and local times, although more observations are needed to untangle these parameter dependencies,” reports study leader Bin Liu of the Laboratory of Lunar and Deep Space Exploration in Beijing China.
Water formation
“Our findings highlight the roles of solar wind implantation and impact gardening in water formation and its distribution in the lunar surface and subsurface, with implications for other airless bodies like Mercury, Vesta and the near-Earth objects, Bin and colleagues report. “The fine regolith from the lunar surface to subsurface depths of millimeters to centimeters or deeper will probably be an important source of lunar water.”
Shuai Li of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, also took part in the study.
Far side scenery taken by Chang’e-6 lander/ascender.
Image credit: CNSA/CLEP
Interesting question
But how much plume effluents, therefore contamination, had to be weighed and what was the impact of that additive engine exhaust on the findings?
Responds Shuai Li of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at the University of Hawaii.
“The short answer is we do not exactly know,” Li told Inside Outer Space.
“But my guess is that the plume fine particles from the shallow subsurface may cover greater than 50 percent of the surface in the deposition zone that shows very low surface temperature – almost no thermal contamination up to 3.2 micron,” Li said. “This is an interesting question to many people in the community and I think there will be more efforts working on this problem.”
Artwork shows Chang’e-7 deployment of Moon hopper. Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Future landers
The Chang’e-6 mission rocketed to Earth the first-ever sampling from the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the Moon.
The Chang’e-5 lunar sample probe touched down on the northwest region of the Ocean of Storms.
As noted by China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, more lunar landers from China are on tap.
The Chang’e-7 lunar lander mission in 2026 is to touch down at the Moon’s south pole, making use of a mini-hopping probe and a rover. It will be followed by the Chang’e-8 mission targeted for the Leibnitz-Beta Plateau near the lunar south pole region.
Artwork depicts China lunar research station. Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
These two lander mission are to lay the groundwork on the Moon for China/Russia collaboration in establishing a multi-phased International Lunar Research Station.
To access the study – “Lunar surface and subsurface water revealed by Chang’e-6” – go to:
Posted in Space News
