The moon was volcanically active later in its history than scientists previously thought, the first lunar rocks brought back to Earth in more than 40 years.
An international consortium of scientists, led by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, examined samples from the moon that were collected by, which landed on the moon in late 2020 and gathered more than 4 pounds of materials from the lunar surface. The researchers found that the moon rocks are around 2 billion years old and are the remnants of an ancient lava flow.
"The general assumption was that the moon is such a small body compared to Earth and Mars, for example, so it cooled off more quickly and stopped producing volcanics," he said. Scientists use a technique known as "crater counting" to estimate the age of planetary surfaces. Researchers can gauge the chronology of craters based on the known ages of samples from the Apollo moon missions.Crater counting indicated that some of the moon's surfaces with fewer impact craters were between 1 billion and 2 billion years old, according to Jolliff.
The Chang'e 5 samples appear to confirm that the moon was volcanically active for longer than scientists previously thought. The samples from the Chinese mission were formed from magma that erupted around 2 billion years ago, which Jolliff said will also help researchers better calibrate the crater counting technique.