Study Suggests Lunar Mantle Contains Less Water on Far Side

Chinese scientists have found that the lunar mantle contains less water on the far side than on the near side, based on an analysis of basalts collected by the Chang'e-6 lunar mission.

The research, which researchers describe as groundbreaking, was conducted by a team led by Professor Hu Sen from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Over the past two decades, extensive studies of lunar samples from the near side of the Moon have demonstrated a highly heterogeneous distribution of water within the Moon.

To confirm their hypotheses, the research team focused on analyzing the water content and hydrogen isotopes within basalts in samples collected and brought back to Earth from the far side of the Moon by that space mission.

This difference between the two sides of the Moon points to a possible hemispheric dichotomy in the internal distribution of water on the satellite, which would explain many of the asymmetric features observed on the lunar surface.

This new estimate of the water content of the hidden lunar mantle represents a significant advance in refining our understanding of the Moon's water inventory, providing important constraints on the large-impact hypothesis for the Moon's origin and highlighting the role of water in its long-term evolution, according to the abstract of the work published in the scientific journal.

This study was carried out in collaboration with Nanjing University and supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and other funding agencies.