Researchers Say Apollo Moon Rocks Contained Water All Along

(March 14) -- Who says you can't get water from a stone?

According to new research, evidence that water exists on the moon is contained within rocks brought back from the Apollo program of the 1960s and '70s.

That finding comes just months after NASA, in an attempt to prove the existence of water on our nearest celestial neighbor, crashed a rocket into the moon, capturing what the agency said was clear imagery of water vapor amid a cloud of dust.

So why didn't scientists notice that the rocks astronauts had collected from the surface of the moon more than three decades ago bore traces of water?

"Only in the last decade have instruments become sensitive enough to even analyze water at those kinds of concentrations," Gary Lofgren, lunar curator at NASA's Johnson Space Center, told National Geographic.

A team of researchers that included James Greenwood, professor of earth and environmental science at Wesleyan University, used an electron microprobe to bombard the Apollo program samples. By analyzing the chemical makeup of the rocks' crystal structure, National Geographic said, the scientists were able to conclude that moon magma itself contains traces of water.

Where did the moon's water come from? Greenwood told National Geographic that one possibility is that it was deposited from ice-covered comets that collided with the moon over billions of years.

Another possibility is that the water was present on the moon when it was born. Scientists now believe that the moon was formed billions of years ago out of the debris caused by a collision of the Earth and a Mars-sized asteroid.

Water from the Earth, the asteroid or both may account for present-day traces of water still found on the moon.