When Apollo 11 astronauts returned to Earth after accomplishing history’s first-ever crewed moon landing, they brought back nearly 50 pounds of moon dust and rocks. Researchers who initially analyzed the material’s parched composition came to an important (and flawed) conclusion: the moon was bone dry.
Undeterred, in all the decades since, some scientists kept up.
Analyzing images of the moon’s darkest areas from ShadowCam, a NASA instrument on the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, the study’s authors determined that, in most of the moon’s darkest craters, water makes up less than about 20 to 30 percent of the material by weight—and that many may have no surface ice at all.
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