"With the cost of $25,000 for taking one pint of water to the moon, it is essential that we develop processes of producing water from the materials on the moon," said the study's lead author, Yang Liu, at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. “Now we have ready sources of water that can not only be consumed by plants and humans, but also electrolysed into its constituent elements – hydrogen and oxygen – to make rocket fuel,” she said. Three independent studies observed water on the surface of the Moon in 2009, but the origin was unknown until now, said Liu. “The researchers have proved you can generate water on the surface of the Moon purely from the impact of the wind of the Sun,” she said. “What they’re working with is a tiny fraction of lunar soil brought back by the Apollo missions, so it’s very hard to generalise from a couple of grains of sand – or glass, which is essentially what they have,” she said. Water in the Universe 
 
 Liu said a source of water in the solar winds “emphasises the possibility of finding water on the surface of other similar airless bodies”.
– There is water on the moon, and it comes from an unlikely source: the sun. That's the conclusion of a new study, after studying soil samples brought back from the original Apollo 11 mission, Cosmos reports. While studies dating back to 2008 have pointed to the existence of water on the moon, until now no one was sure where it came from. Now, University of Tennessee researchers believe that solar winds carry hydrogen ejected from the sun's atmosphere to the moon. The study will force scientists to rethink the conventional wisdom that water in the inner solar system generally comes from icy meteors or comets. This more reliable source of water could make a lunar colony more feasible, the lead author says. "This water would be of most value as rocket fuel—liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen," she tells Space.com. "We could use the moon as a jump-board for missions to Mars and beyond." Others aren't as sure. "Extracting the water might be as much trouble as it's worth," one independent geochemist warns.