China’s Moon samples open a new era

The story: Chinese scientists started analyzing the first new samples brought back from the moon in 45 years, specimens that could reset the clock on

China’s Moon samples open a new era

---

• The story: Chinese scientists started analyzing the first new samples brought back from the moon in 45 years, specimens that could reset the clock on not just lunar chronology but also planetary bodies' evolution across the solar system.
• Chang'e 5 mission: China's Chang'e 5 mission's return capsure came to Earth in December 2020, having collected about 1.7 kilograms of rock and soil from Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms) in the northwestern corner of the moon's near side. Orbital imagery suggests the crust there formed about 1.5 billion years ago. This youth is strange, as modelling shows that a small body like the moon should by then have lost the internal heat remaining from its formation. That heat was needed to drive volcanic resurfacing and crust development. So how exactly was such a young crust created?
• Using other tricks: Since samples from this region were missing, scientists estimated its surface age by counting impact craters. The logic used was that older surfaces would bear more such scars than younger ones would. This technique extends to any solid planetary body. Samples that U.S. and Soviet missions collected from the moon's equatorial, northeastern and northern regions between 1969 and 1976 indicate those surfaces are three billion to four billion years old.

1. The Apollo samples were ground truth for the crater-counting models but the earlier samples cover only those older regions
2. Anything that happened between roughly three to one billion years ago, there weren't any samples
3. If the new specimens prove younger than the crater-counting models suggest, the whole chronology of the moon needs correcting
4. Other measurements, such as radioactivity, may help explain lunar volcanoes' extended activity.

• Why important: Learning this history is not only key to lunar evolution; it also helps age-date Mercury, Mars, Earth and other bodies. A six-month time frame for Chinese investigators to submit requests for samples will end in July or August 2021. China's policy is to open future allocations to international research teams. The decade-old "Wolf Amendment" bans NASA-backed entities from working with China, but exceptions are possible, and other agencies (including the National Science Foundation) are not subject to the Congressional rule.
• Summary: U.S. and China may conduct an Apollo-Chang'e 5 sample swap. The moon's story may just be re-written for good!

 

Join PT courses | PT Youtube | PT App | Contribute |  Testimonials