Moon could be wetter than thought, scientists say

The Moon, long thought to be a dry, inhospitable orb, hosts surprisingly large sub-surface water reserves, which one day may quench the thirst of lunar explorers from Earth, scientists said on July 24.

"We found the signature of the lunar interior water globally using satellite data," Shuai Li, co-author of a study by scientists at Brown University in the United States, said.

"Such water can be used as in situ resources for future exploration," said Li, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hawaii and Brown Ph.D graduate.

Li noted scientists had believed the Moon to be "bone dry" until about a decade ago, when scientists found evidence of water, an essential ingredient for life, in pebble-like beads brought back by Apollo missions. 

The Brown findings show numerous volcanic deposits distributed across the surface of the Moon contain "unusually high amounts of trapped water" compared with surrounding terrain.

They say discovery of water in the ancient deposits, which are believed to consist of glass beads formed by the explosive eruption of magma from beneath the Moon's surface, boosts the idea that the lunar mantle is surprisingly water-rich.

"The key question is whether those Apollo samples represent the bulk conditions of the lunar interior or instead represent unusual or perhaps anomalous water-rich regions within an otherwise 'dry' mantle," said Ralph Milliken, lead author of the new research, published in the Nature Geoscience journal.

"The distribution of these water-rich deposits is the key thing," Milliken said. "They're spread across the surface, which tells us that the water found in the Apollo samples isn't a one-off," he added.

"By looking at the orbital data, we can examine...