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. "This may seem like science fiction," Tartese said.In a word, asteroids. (Photo: AFP)After the Apollo missions scooped up rocks from the Moon’s surface and brought them home, scientists were convinced for decades that they had proof our nearest celestial neighbour was drier than a bone."It is also possible, the researchers said, that some of the water on the lunar surface may have been ejected by volcanic eruptions, bubbling up from what was once a molten interior.Even if scientists today are sure there is water trapped on the Moon, they do not know how much, said co-author Roman Tartese, a researcher at the Minerology Institute of France’s National Museum for Natural History.If future scientific missions can extract oxygen from these molecules, astronauts could live — and breath — inside bases on the lunar surface.5 billion years ago, it was bombarded with water-rich asteroids known as carbonaceous chondrites for tens of millions of years, perhaps longer.

The Moon, in fact, probably began as "an enormous ball of magma" progressively cooled and hardened, said Tartese.On the surface, up to a billion tonnes of frozen water — enough to fill a million Olympic pools — is probably lodged inside deep craters around the north and south lunar poles, where the Sun’s rays never penetrate.How wrong they were.Water on the Moon could have very practical implications.After the Moon was born of a collision between Earth and a Mars-sized planet some 4.And the hydrogen, once separated from the oxygen, could be used as fuel for rockets or space-based mining operations.New technology detected water in those dusty samples nearly a decade ago, and a new study, published recently, tells us how and when that water — lots and lots of it — likely wound up on the Moon.Recent research concluded that it "has been trapped there for three or four billion years," Tartese said by email."But it is one of the reasons several space agencies — including the European Space Agency and National Aeronautics and Space Administration — are currently developing robotic missions to explore new regions to better estimate the quantity of ice."The Moon can be viewed as a giant time capsule, preserving a record of the impact history of Earth and Moon since their formation," explained lead author Jessica Barnes, a researcher at The Open University in southern England.

If there is that much, it will likely be locked inside minerals in the form of hydroxyl (OH) molecules, he added.Astronaut Harrison Schmitt collects lunar rake samples at the Taurus-Littrow landing site on the moon during the Apollo 17 mission on December China Vegetable Empty Capsule manufacturers 11, 1972.So was Earth, which is one reason the findings, published in Nature Communications, are of more than academic interest."If we extrapolate from the Apollo samples, the lunar interior could contain on the order of 1,000 trillion tonnes," he told AFP.On our on planet, that record has been largely erased by tectonic plates moving continents like pieces on a board game.