[FPSPACE] Apollo moon rocks found to have trace of water in them
pjp961 at svol.net
Thu Jul 10 12:42:03 EDT 2008
Water Found on the Moon
By Brandon Keim
July 09, 2008 | 1:00:00 PM
Though the moon has many seas
scientists thought it was dry.
They were wrong.
In a study published today in Nature, researchers led by Brown University
geologist Alberto Saal found evidence of water molecules in pebbles
retrieved by NASA's Apollo missions.
The findings point to the existence of water deep beneath the moon's
surface, transforming scientific understanding of our nearest neighbor's
formation and, perhaps, our own. There may also be a more immediately
"Is there water there? That's important for lunar missions. People could get
the water. They could use the hydrogen for energy," said Saal.
The pebbles were scattered by lunar volcanoes that erupted three billion
years ago, when the moon was still a cooling hunk of magma cast into orbit
by the collision of a Mars-sized asteroid with Earth.
That impact enveloped the Earth in temperatures reaching 7000 Kelvin -- more
than enough, it was thought, to obliterate all traces of hydrogen and
Though NASA's Lunar Prospector appeared to have struck ice in 1999, its
findings proved inconclusive. Had they been supported, scientists predicted
that any water would have come from gases emitted by meteorites striking the
With so little reason to believe in native lunar water, said Saal, it took
three years to secure the minimal funding necessary to take another look at
the Apollo pebbles, gathered between 1969 and 1972.
But a high-powered imaging technique known as secondary
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_ion_mass_spectrometry> ion mass
spectrometry revealed a wealth of so-called volatile compounds, among them
fluorine, chlorine, sulfur, carbon dioxide -- and water.
Critically, telltale hydrogen molecules were concentrated at the center of
samples rather than their surfaces, assuring Saal's team that water was
present in an infant moon rather than added by recent bombardment.
"That was not known," said William Feldman, a Los Alamos National Laboratory
geophysicist who was not involved in the study.
If that water in fact came from the Earth, then planetary geologists can be
certain that our planet contained water 4.5 billion years ago. That would
change the dynamics of models of Earth's formations.
"Volatile elements play a fundamental role in planetary formation through
their influence on melting," said Feldman. "Melting temperatures are lower,
you get different kinds of volcanic flows and magma crystallization. It's
important for a lot of the processes that determine surface mineralogy."
Alternatively, water could have been added after the moon was ejected into
space but before it cooled, raising new questions about the water's origin.
"This opens up so many lines of study," said Saal.
More practically, the widespread presence of water in the moon's interior,
or atop frigid polar regions where volcanic debris may have settled, could
prove a boon to future lunar colonies, who could harvest it for breathable
oxygen and hydrogen fuel.
Whether that is possible depends on the water's extent and concentration.
This is not now known.
Materials collected by the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter, which will scour the
moon's south pole later this year, and the Lunar Crater Observation and
Sensing Satellite, scheduled for launch in 2009, should provide further
"Could a colony use the water? That's like asking the final score of a
football game in the first five minutes of the first quarter," said Saal.
"But at least we know there's a game on."
Volatile content of lunar volcanic glasses and the presence of water in the
Moon's interior [Nature]
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
More information about the FPSPACE