Fig. 3: Variation of lunar mantle water abundance estimates with time.
From: A dry lunar mantle reservoir for young mare basalts of Chang’e-5
The maximum mantle water abundance at 2.03 Ga, which was estimated in this study using CE5 basalts, plots at the lower end of mantle water abundance estimates for Apollo samples and lunar meteorites formed between around 4.0 Ga and 2.8 Ga. All data are plotted as average values with the error bars representing the ranges of estimates. Estimates for the water abundances in the last dregs of the lunar magma ocean (urKREEP)25 and Earth’s primitive mantle50 are shown for comparison. The red and dark blue solid lines represent average values estimated from CE5 basalts and previous lunar samples, respectively. It is noted that the vertical axis is a log scale. Literature data are provided in Extended Data Table 5.
