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In a recent study it is revealed that the water existed there from the very beginning. Tiny green and orange glass balls brought back from the moon nearly 40 years ago by astronauts have now shown evidence that water existed there from the very beginning, US scientists reported on Wednesday.

Their study, published in Nature, could support evidence that water persists in shadowed craters on the moon’s surface – and that it could be native to the moon and not carried there by comets, as previously believed.

Erik Hauri of the Carnegie Institution for Science had developed a technique called secondary ion mass spectrometry, or SIMS, which could detect minute amounts of elements in samples. His team was using it to find evidence of water in the Earth’s molten mantle.

Saal, Hauri and colleagues were able to get about 40 of the little glass beads and break them apart for analysis. What they found overturned the conventional wisdom that the moon is dry.

Saal’s team did not find water directly, but they did measure hydrogen, and it resembled the measurements they have done to detect hydrogen, and eventually water, in samples from Earth’s mantle.

The evidence shows that the hydrogen in the sample vaporised during volcanic activity, which was similar to lava spurts seen on Earth.

“It suggests the possibility that the moon’s interior might have had as much water as the Earth’s upper mantle,” said Hauri. “But even more intriguing - if the moon’s volcanoes released 95 per cent of their water, where did all that water go?”

Many questions are yet to be answered.