United Kingdom, June 7 -- The Moon could be hiding precious metals worth $1 trillion.

Scientists have made the "conservative" estimate based on a study that analysed the lunar surface's pockmarked terrain and calculated how many of its craters were likely to have been formed by asteroids rich in platinum group metals (PGMs) - ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and platinum itself.

Jayanth Vyasanakere, the study's lead author, said: "On cosmic timescales, over several generations of stellar birth and death, they get mixed with other elements and end up in planet-forming discs and then within planets and asteroids.

"Metallic asteroids have a significant fraction of iron, and the PGMs are found bound to it. When these asteroid...