NASA team makes lunar watershed discovery

NASA team makes lunar watershed discovery

2011-05-27 02:38:50 GMT+7 (ICT)

MOFFETT FIELD, CALIFORNIA (BNO NEWS) -- The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Thursday announced that a team of researchers measured water from the moon for the first time.

The NASA-funded team studied water from the moon in the form of tiny globules of molten rock, which have turned to glass-like material trapped within crystals. The data indicated that the water content of lunar magma is 100 times higher than previous studies suggested.

The water crystals were found in the lunar sample 74220, a high-titanium "orange glass soil" of volcanic origin collected during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Scientists used a state-of-the-art ion microprobe instrument for the measures.

The results raised questions on the "giant impact theory" of how the moon was created. The research also provided additional scientific justification for studying similar samples from other planetary bodies in the solar system.

"Water plays a critical role in determining the tectonic behavior of planetary surfaces, the melting point of planetary interiors and the location and eruptive style of planetary volcanoes," said Erik Hauri, a geochemist and lead author of the study.

The lunar melt inclusions were entrapped in crystal-like materials that prevented the escape of water and other volatiles during eruption in contrast with most volcanic deposits.

"These samples provide the best window we have on the amount of water in the interior of the moon where the orange glass came from," said science team member James Van Orman.

The first evidence of water in lunar volcanic glasses was discovered in a 2008 study led by Alberto Saal of Brown University. A subsequent research by Brown undergraduate student, Thomas Weinreich, found melt inclusions.

Before the new study, it was believed that the water-ice detected in craters at the lunar poles by several recent NASA missions was due to comet and meteor impacts. Researchers are now considering the possibility that the ice came from the eruption of lunar magmas eons ago.

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