Moon may never have been 'very watery'

A new study has raised concerns over previous studies which have misled scientists into believing that the Moon is wetter than it actually is.

Lead author Jeremy Boyce, a NASA Early Career Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles said that a mineral called apatite, which was thought to be a great indicator that the Moon once held abundant water, as it was found in a variety of lunar rock types, is actually not that reliable, the BBC reported.

Previous studies of apatite as well as volcanic glass had revealed that there was an abundance of hydrogen lending to the idea that a great deal of water could have been on the Moon, but recent researches have shown that the abundance of hydrogen does not necessarily mean that this came from an abundance of water, and that scientists had been misled by apatite.

The results were presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas, and have also been published in journal Science.