‘Water-rich’ Moon could help create human colony
There may not be any cheese to eat on the Moon, but a new study suggests there are vast deposits of water to drink. In good news for hopes of building a base there as humans begin efforts to colonise our solar system, researchers detected signs that the “bulk of the interior of the Moon is wet”.
While water was detected in small quantities in material collected by astronauts who took part in the
Apollo space missions, it was thought unlikely that the Moon would contain much water because of the way it was formed. It is thought the Earth’s natural satellite was created from the debris left by a cataclysmic collision between the early Earth and a Mars-sized object. The heat created by this impact should have driven off hydrogen needed to create H2O. But, in the new study, scientific instruments detected tell-tale signs of the presence of water in most of the samples of material produced by volcanic eruptions on the Moon, the researchers reported in the journal Nature Geoscience.
One of the researchers, Professor Ralph Milliken, of Brown University, said: “The fact that nearly all of them exhibit signatures of water suggests that the Apollo samples are not anomalous, so it may be that the bulk interior of the Moon is wet. The distribution of these water-rich deposits is the key thing. They’re spread across the surface, which tells us that the water found in the Apollo samples isn’t a one-off. Lunar pyroclastics [volcanic material] seem to be universally water-rich, which suggests the same may be true of the mantle.”
Dr Shuai Li, of Hawaii University, suggested that the water might have survived the astonishing collision or could have been delivered to the Moon by asteroid and comet strikes. “The exact origin of water in the lunar interior is still a big question,” he said. But, whatever its source, it could make setting up a moonbase considerably easier.
“Other studies have suggested the presence of water ice in shadowed regions at the lunar poles, but the pyroclastic deposits are at locations that may be easier to access,” Dr Li said. “Anything that helps save future lunar explorers from having to bring lots of water from home is a big step forward, and our results suggest a new alternative.”