* Astronomy

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RE: Lunar water

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UNM Researchers Find No Water In Moons Mantle

Recently, there's been a fair amount of interest and excitement about whether or not there is actually water on the moon. And it's true, water has been detected on the moon's surface through remote sensing. However, researchers at the University of New Mexico, UCLA, University of Texas at Austin and Los Alamos National Laboratory, have taken a deeper look within the Moon's mantle and the results tell a different story. Their findings were published today in a Sciencexpress Report titled, "The Chlorine Isotope Composition of the Moon and Implications for an Anhydrous Mantle."
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A team of US geologists has found structurally bound hydroxyl groups in a mineral in a lunar rock returned to earth by the Apollo programme.
Geologists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), working with colleagues at the University of Tennessee, found the water in a calcium phosphate mineral, apatite, within a basalt collected from the moons surface by the Apollo 14 astronauts, Xinhua reported.
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'Much more water' found in lunar rocks

The Moon might be much wetter than previously thought, say scientists.
A US-led team analysed the mineral apatite in lunar rocks picked up by the Apollo space missions and in a lunar meteorite found in North Africa.
The scientists found that there is at least 100 times more water in the Moon's minerals than they had previously believed.
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Research Suggests Water Content Of Moon Interior Underestimated

NASA-funded scientists estimate from recent research that the volume of water molecules locked inside minerals in the moon's interior could exceed the amount of water in the Great Lakes here on Earth.
Scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, along with other scientists across the nation, determined that the water was likely present very early in the moon's formation history as hot magma started to cool and crystallize. This finding means water is native to the moon.
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NASA radar on Chandrayaan-I detects ice deposits in moon

Scientists have detected more than 40 ice-filled craters in the moon's North Pole using data from a NASA radar that flew aboard India's Chandrayaan-I.
NASA's Mini-SAR instrument, lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, found more than 40 small craters with water ice. The craters range in size from 2 to 15 km in diameter.
The finding would give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit, a NASA statement said, adding it is estimated that there could be at least 600 million metric tons of water ice in the craters.
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Are we looking in the wrong places for water on the moon?

Conventional theory says water ice should be concentrated in permanently shadowed craters near the poles, but that's not where it seems to be turning up
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Things are looking up in the celestial neighbourhood - it seems that our solar system is not the series of bleak and inhospitable wastelands we once thought. Only a month ago we reported that Nasa scientists, by firing a satellite into a crater near the moons south pole, have proved that there is water on the moon. The agency found enough to pour about two bathtubs, but it suggested there is plenty more locked in ice fields sheltered on the dark side from the sun. This week evidence also emerged that the methane known to be on Mars, more like Earth than any other body in our solar system, was produced on the planet itself.
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In a discovery that may solve the mystery behind the source of moon's water, an evidence from NASA's LCROSS mission suggested that much of it was delivered by comets that slammed into the Earth's satellite billions of years ago.
Previous missions had also found hints of lunar water but its source was never clear. One idea is that it forms when hydrogen atoms from the solar wind latch onto oxygen atoms in the lunar soil, creating hydroxyl and water.
According to the data revealed recently at the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group meeting, a gathering of 160 lunar scientists in Houston, the evidence is mounting in favour of an alternative explanation - comet impacts.

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Credit NASA