2 Odd craters
After the Apollo missions the debate over water on the Moon continued. Satellites orbiting the Moon in the last few years have discovered tiny amounts of water in ice within craters at the poles and locked up in rare minerals.
In the previous video, ‘A paradigm shift?’, you heard how the long-held idea that the Moon was a completely dry body has been turned on its head thanks to several recent discoveries. Now you start to find out more about these ground-breaking discoveries, and why finding water on the Moon is so important for both scientific understanding of the Moon, and further exploration of the Solar System.
To date, two distinct types of lunar water have been found: water on the surface of the Moon and water locked up inside minerals formed in the Moon’s interior. This part of the course focuses on the water found on the lunar surface, how it was discovered, and how it might have formed. First, learn about water locked deep in Moon rocks.