Water on the moon: it’s been there all along February 21, 2013
Traces of water have been detected within the crystalline
structure of mineral samples from the lunar highland upper crust
obtained during the Apollo missions, according to a University
of Michigan researcher and his colleagues. The lunar highlands
are thought to represent the original crust, crystallized from a
magma ocean on a mostly molten early moon. The new findings
indicate that the early moon was wet and that water there was
not substantially lost during the moon’s formation. The results
seem to contradict the predominant lunar formation theory — that
the moon was formed from debris generated during a giant impact
between Earth and another planetary body, approximately the size
of Mars, according to U-M’s Youxue Zhang and his colleagues.
Over the last five years, spacecraft observations and new lab
measurements of Apollo lunar samples have overturned the long-
held belief that the moon is bone-dry. In 2008, laboratory
measurement of Apollo l