Artemis landings may contaminate Moon’s ancient ice, study finds | Technology News
2 min readJul 15, 2026 06:52 PM Future crewed missions to the Moon could unintentionally erase some of the oldest chemical evidence linked to the origins of life on Earth, according to a new study that raises concerns about contamination from spacecraft landings.
As Nasa prepares to expand its Artemis programme with more astronaut missions and a long-term lunar base near the Moon’s south pole, researchers say exhaust gases from lunar landers could pollute ancient ice deposits that have remained largely undurbed for billions of years.
The study focuses on permanently shadowed craters near the Moon’s poles, where temperatures are cold enough for ice to survive indefinitely. Scients believe this ice contains material delivered asteroids and comets during the early hory of the solar system, including prebiotic organic molecules — the building blocks that may have contributed to the emergence of life on Earth.
Unlike Earth, where geological activity and erosion have erased much of the planet’s earliest chemical hory, the Moon has remained relatively unchanged. As a result, these frozen deposits could preserve an ancient record of molecules from the time when life first emerged.
Methane’s rapid spread after landing
Using computer simulations, researchers found that methane, a major component of rocket exhaust from planned lunar landers, could spread rapidly across the Moon after a landing. Because the Moon has virtually no atmosphere, methane molecules would travel in ballic “hops” across the surface instead of dispersing through the air.
The simulations suggest methane released during landings near the South Pole could reach the Moon’s north pole in less than two lunar days. Within about a lunar week, researchers estimate that more than half of the methane would become trapped in permanently shadowed polar regions, including the same icy craters scients hope to study.
