spacetoday.net: Scientists find evidence of water in lunar interior

Posted: Thu, Jul 10, 2008, 6:29 AM ET (1029 GMT)
Analysis of rocks returned by the Apollo missions to the Moon has led scientists to conclude that the lunar interior contains at least traces of water, a discovery with implications for the Moon's formation and perhaps future exploration. In a paper in this week's issue of the journal Nature, scientists reported detecting higher-than expected amounts of water in volcanic glasses returned to Earth during the Apollo missions. Scientists believe that the lunar interior may have contained as much water, about 750 parts per million, as pre-eruption magma on Earth. How that water got to the Moon, given that current models for the Moon's formation are based on a giant impact with the proto-Earth that would have presumably vaporized most of the water present, is unclear. While much of that water would have been lost to outgassing since the Moon's formation, some of it may have collected in permanently shadowed regions of craters at the lunar poles.