(CNN) Meteorites can strike the moon and cause bursts of water to shoot up out of the ground.

That's the main takeaway from a new study announced by NASA that challenges our perceptions of the moon and other rocky orbs out in space.

Micro-meteorites collide with the moon at high velocity and send shock waves reverberating through the lunar surface. They only need to penetrate a few inches to stir up deposits of water, and the high energy of the collision converts the molecules into water vapor. The plumes spurt out into space. Most of the molecules dissipate into the very thin atmosphere around the moon, while some settle back into the ground.

An artist's concept of water vapor from meteoroid impacts on the moon.

The new insight into our closest neighbor in space comes in a study just published in Nature Geoscience by scientists from NASA, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

The study's lead author was Mehdi Benna, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He told CNN the breakthrough "provides a big piece of the puzzle" as to what happens when meteorites collide with other "airless bodies" around our solar system and beyond.

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