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Writer Fuel: Is Much of the Moon’s Water Locked inside Glass Beads?

Spherules from an 800,000-year-old meteor impact found in the Transantarctic Mountains. Similar beads on the moon may contain billions of tons of buried water, new research suggests. (Image credit: Van Ginnekan, Genge and Harvey 2018, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta)

Chinese researchers may have discovered billions of tons of water inside strange glass spheres buried on the moon, and they could be used as a future water source for moon bases, a new study suggests.

The tiny glass spherules, collected in lunar soil samples and brought to Earth by China’s Chang’e-5 mission in December 2020, could be so abundant that they store up to 330 billion tons (300 billion metric tons) of water across the moon’s surface, the new analysis, published March 28 in the journal Nature Geoscience, shows.

The glass spherules, also known as impact glasses or microtektites, form when meteorites smash into the moon at tens to hundreds of thousands of miles per hour, blasting chunks of lunar crust above the moon’s surface. Inside these plumes, silicate minerals heated to molten temperatures by the force of the impact combine to form tiny glass beads that are sprinkled like crumbs over the surrounding landscape.

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Full Story From Live Science