![]() Using sophisticated computer models, Saxena, Killen, and colleagues think they may have finally solved both mysteries. “As you learn about other stars and planets, especially stars like our Sun, you start to get a bigger picture of how the Sun evolved over time,” Saxena said. This insight was derived by scientists who studied the activity of thousands of stars discovered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope: The faster a star spins, they found, the more violent its ejections. Saxena incorporated the mathematical relationship between a star’s rotation rate and its flare activity. In 2012, she helped simulate the effect solar activity has on the amount of sodium and potassium that is either delivered to the Moon’s surface or knocked off by a stream of charged particles from the Sun, known as the solar wind, or by powerful eruptions known as coronal mass ejections. Killen’s earlier work laid the foundation for the team’s investigation. The two scientists suspected that one big question informed the other - that the history of the Sun is buried in the Moon’s crust. ![]() “The Earth and Moon would have formed with similar materials, so the question is, why was the Moon depleted in these elements?” said Rosemary Killen, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard who researches the effect of space weather on planetary atmospheres and exospheres. 68815, a dislodged fragment from a parent boulder roughly four feet high and five feet long. A closeup view of Apollo 16 lunar sample no.
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