Moon likely to have huge water reservoirs trapped under surface: Study

New Delhi : Moon is likely to have huge water reservoirs trapped under its surface in the form of volcanic ‘glass beads’, finds a new study.

The water can be extracted and can be taken into use by scientists in future lunar colonies, the study added.

As per new findings, numerous volcanic deposits can be seen distributed across the surface of the Moon with high amounts of trapped water.

In 2008, scientists had found water traces in volcanic glass beads brought back to Earth from the Apollo 15 and 17 missions to the Moon. In 2011, another study gave weight to the finding and suggested that Moon's surface might be water rich.

“The key question is whether those Apollo samples represent the bulk conditions of the lunar interior or instead represent unusual or perhaps anomalous water-rich regions within an otherwise ‘dry’ mantle,” said Ralph Milliken, an associate professor at Brown University in the US.

“By looking at the orbital data, we can examine the large pyroclastic deposits on the Moon that were never sampled by the Apollo or Luna missions,” said Milliken.

“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,” he said.

Now, the latest study has claimed that Moon has huge amount of water reservoirs trapped inside its surface and they are spreaded all across it.

The volcanic beads do not contain a lot of water – about 0.05 per cent by weight – but the deposits are large, and the water could potentially be extracted, researchers said.