Lunar rocks reveal water on the moon 40 years after they were brought back to Earth

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Lunar rocks reveal water on the moon 40 years after they were brought back to Earth


By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 9:30 AM on 10th July 2008


Moon rocks brought back during the Apollo missions nearly 40 years ago have revealed water existed there from the very beginning, scientists reported today.

A new method of analysing elements in the lunar sand samples has shown strong evidence of water, dating back 3 billion years.

The study increases the possibility that water is still present in shadowed craters on the moon's surface and casts doubt on the theory that liquid was brought to the moon by comets.

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Astronauts brought back rocks from the surface from several Apollo missions

It will give new impetus to two NASA missions seeking water on the moon. The Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter will luanch this year and hunt for water at the poles. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite is already searching for ice.

Finding water is crucial to NASA's plan to set up an outpost on the moon, from which Mars missions could be launched.

Most scientists believe the moon was formed when a Mars-size body collided with Earth 4.5 billion years ago.

The giant impact would have melted both proto-planets and sent molten debris into orbit around the Earth.

Some scientists believe water could still exist at the Moon's polar regions

Some of this would have eventually coalesced into the moon, but the heat of the impact would have theoretically vaporized light elements such as the hydrogen and oxygen needed to make water.

Erik Hauri of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington had developed a technique called secondary ion mass spectrometry or SIMS, which could detect minute amounts of elements in samples.

His team was using it to find evidence of water in the Earth's molten mantle.

"Then one day I said, 'Look, why don't we go and try it on the moon glass?'" Alberto Saal of Brown University, who helped lead the study, said in a telephone interview.

"It took us three years to convince NASA to fund us."

Saal, Hauri and colleagues were able to get about 40 of the little grains of volcanic glass in the rocks and break them apart for analysis.

What they found overturned the conventional wisdom that the moon is dry.

'For 40 years people have tried (to find evidence of water) and were not successful,' Saal said.

'They were convinced we were not doing something worthwhile.'

Saal's team did not find water directly, but they did measure hydrogen, and it resembled the measurements they have done to detect hydrogen, and eventually water, in samples from Earth's mantle.

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Moon river: Scientists have found evidence of water in lunar rock

The evidence shows that the hydrogen in the sample vaporized during volcanic activity that would be similar to lava spurts seen on Earth today.

'It suggests the intriguing possibility that the moon's interior might have had as much water as the Earth's upper mantle,' Hauri said.

'But even more intriguing -- if the moon's volcanoes released 95 percent of their water, where did all that water go?'

Some might still remain at the poles, frozen in the shadows of craters, he speculated. Several lunar missions have found such evidence.

The discoveries could imply that water has a common origin.



Lunar rocks reveal water on the moon 40 years after they were brought back to Earth | Mail Online