A Moistened Moon II

Over at the Planetary Society blog Emily Lakdawalla gives us a more detailed account of just how and what was found on the Moon…

The “Water on the Moon” Hooplapart 2

…which explains a lot of the current ambiguity in the data. So is there another data point that might help resolve the issue?

The Bone-Dry Moon Might be Damp
…discusses research on volcanic glass found in the Apollo moon-rocks and regolith samples. Apparently the glass has 50 ppm water, but lost ~95% during eruption, thus originally had ~750 ppm, which is close to Earth’s mantle value and the high end of the new observations. So the Moon has (some) water. Of course 0.075% doesn’t sound like much, but if all the water in the Moon’s mantle erupted then it really would have seas and a steam atmosphere. For comparison, Earth’s oceans, all 1.35E+9 km3 of them, represent just 0.15% of the Earth’s mantle’s volume and 0.05% of its mass.