The significance of the new work is two-fold. First, it is additional evidence that the Moon’s mantle (i.e., the magnesium- and iron-rich zone below the crust) contained significant amounts of water at one time. The presence of this water is difficult to explain; it is not what one would expect from the extremely high temperature environment inferred from the collisional-ejection model for the origin of the Moon (the one currently favored by most lunar scientists). The fact that significant water exists (or existed) deep within the Moon indicates that water was part of the original lunar accretion disk from the beginning, which also implies that the Earth had significant water at that time as well. Secondly, because these tiny glass beads contain significantly more water (~several hundred parts per million) than the 10-50 ppm of typical lunar soils, thoughts naturally turn to mining the pyroclastics to extract water in order to support the future exploration of space.
The polar deposits consist of chemically unbound, physically discrete ice, probably mixed with varying quantities of lunar regolith. As such, it will require much less effort to separate the water from its host material at the poles than at the equator.