{"id":247821,"date":"2026-01-20T09:54:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T09:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/247821\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T09:54:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T09:54:07","slug":"first-contact-in-quest-for-water-on-the-moon-chinese-team-flags-risk-in-touching-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/247821\/","title":{"rendered":"First contact: in quest for water on the moon, Chinese team flags risk in touching ice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>China\u2019s Chang\u2019e-7 mission this year will be the world\u2019s first to attempt to <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/news\/china\/science\/article\/3329997\/china-led-moon-missions-water-probe-will-be-first-humanity-space-agency?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">sample and directly measure water on the moon<\/a>, but just touching lunar ice could mean losing it, a team of scientists has warned in a new paper.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The spacecraft is expected to touch down near the rim of Shackleton crater at the lunar south pole, where it will deploy a rover and hopper to search for ice.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">While water could support long-term human activity on the moon, from providing drinking water and oxygen to producing rocket fuel, water on the moon does not behave like it does on Earth. It is locked in frozen soil, not exposed to air and held in place only by cold and vacuum.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Collecting lunar ice properly could prove far trickier than measuring it, according to a team from the Harbin Institute of Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences that is helping prepare the mission to collect and test lunar water samples.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1o401188 css-1w1l3op e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768902847_468_maxresdefault.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p data-qa=\"SCMPYoutubeVideoPreview-PreviewDuration\" class=\"css-1vqvq42 e1o401181\">01:57<\/p>\n<p data-qa=\"SCMPYoutubeVideoPreview-PreviewTitle\" class=\"css-zasw6y e1o401182\">China\u2019s Chang\u2019e-6 mission returns to Earth with first samples from moon\u2019s far side<\/p>\n<p>China\u2019s Chang\u2019e-6 mission returns to Earth with first samples from moon\u2019s far side<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">As the Chang\u2019e-7 sampler on the rover\u2019s robotic arm scrapes into icy soil, even slight warming from contact and friction could loosen water molecules, the researchers wrote in a paper published in the Chinese Journal of Space Science this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China\u2019s Chang\u2019e-7 mission this year will be the world\u2019s first to attempt to sample and directly measure water&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[132604,132603,132607,988,132602,132599,85,46,75567,132605,132601,24781,8245,141,132606,145,132600],"class_list":{"0":"post-247821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-apollo-16-samples","9":"tag-change-7","10":"tag-change-7-mission","11":"tag-chinese-academy-of-sciences","12":"tag-chinese-journal-of-space-science","13":"tag-harbin-institute-of-technology","14":"tag-il","15":"tag-israel","16":"tag-lunar-exploration-missions","17":"tag-lunar-ice","18":"tag-lunar-poles","19":"tag-lunar-south-pole","20":"tag-moon","21":"tag-science","22":"tag-shackleton-crater","23":"tag-space","24":"tag-wenchang-space-launch-pad"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}