On October 15, during a press conference hosted by the State Council Information Office, Yang Xiaoyu, the director of the System Engineering Department at the China National Space Administration (CNSA), shared some exciting updates about lunar exploration. He revealed that on June 25, the Chang’e 6 mission successfully returned 1,935.3 grams of samples from the far side of the Moon, marking the first time humanity has brought back samples from this unexplored region.
Currently, scientists are in the process of organizing these lunar samples, having completed initial assessments of their physical and chemical composition as well as their structural characteristics. They have uncovered a wealth of information, including insights into the Moon’s early evolution, volcanic activity on the far side, and basalt that records the volcanic activity history of the sampling sites, alongside some non-basalt materials from other regions. Looking ahead, Yang indicated that further research would follow the national lunar sample distribution policy.
Earlier, on December 17, 2020, the Chang’e 5 mission returned 1,731 grams of lunar soil, the youngest lunar samples ever obtained by humanity. Over the past few years, the CNSA has distributed a total of 80 grams of lunar samples across seven batches to 131 research institutions domestically for scientific study. Chinese scientists have engaged in extensive research, producing numerous high-quality papers with significant discoveries and findings.
“One notable discovery was that we determined the age of the basalt from the Chang’e 5 samples to be around 2 billion years,” Yang explained. “This pushes back the timeline for when volcanic activity on the Moon ceased by about 800 million years. Further studies found evidence of volcanic activity on the Moon as recently as 120 million years ago. Additionally, we discovered that the Moon is cooling much more slowly than previously thought, and we ruled out the hypothesis that the heat source for initial magma melting in the basaltic areas of the landing zone was derived from radioactive elements.”
Yang also mentioned that the CNSA has estimated the water content in the mantle source area of the Chang’e 5 lunar samples to be between 1 to 5 micrograms per gram of rock, indicating that the basalt source region is quite “dry.” Compared to results from Apollo samples, this marks the lowest water content found in mantle materials, challenging the traditional theory that high water content during early mantle melting led to a lower melting point and prolonged magma activity.
Furthermore, scientists identified a new mineral, which has been named “Chang’e Stone,” representing the sixth new mineral discovered on the Moon.
“There are many more achievements like these,” Yang concluded, highlighting the significant progress made in lunar research.
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