Water has been found in ancient lunar meteorites

Apatite has previously been identified in all lunar rock types except for ancient ferruginous anorthosite, which formed 4.5-4.3 billion years ago and is the only known rock type to have formed directly from the lunar magma ocean. Therefore, it was thought that little water was initially present on the early Moon.

In the new work, the scientists identified the presence of apatite in ferruginous anorthosite in the lunar meteorite Arabian Peninsula 007, which was discovered in Saudi Arabia in 2015. Thus, volatile substances were found in the lunar crust much more often than the results of previous studies suggested.