{"id":1216042,"date":"2025-02-16T07:03:47","date_gmt":"2025-02-16T12:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1216042"},"modified":"2025-02-16T07:03:47","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T12:03:47","slug":"moon-rocks-reveal-hidden-lunar-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1216042","title":{"rendered":"Moon rocks reveal hidden lunar history"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the summer of 2024, a robotic mission landed for the first time on the far side of the Moon. The Chinese Chang\u2019e-6 lander planted a flag, dug up more than four pounds of rock and soil, and brought it back home\u2014an accomplishment widely lauded as a technological tour de force.<\/p>\n

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That mission, and the 2020 Chang\u2019e-5 robotic mission before it, are the first to return lunar rocks to Earth since the 1970s. Together they are building on what scientists learned from Apollo-era missions, helping to unravel mysteries about how the Moon was formed and why it looks the way it does today, and providing clues about our solar system\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

But big puzzles remain, such as why the far side of the Moon\u2014the half that always faces away from Earth\u2014is so radically different from the near side. And what is behind the surprising finding that lunar volcanoes may have been active much more recently than previously thought? \u201cThe more we look at the Moon, the more we\u2019ve discovered\u2014and the more we realize how little we know,\u201d says Clive R. Neal, a geologist at the University of Notre Dame who specializes in lunar exploration.<\/p>\n

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\n China\u2019s 2024 Chang\u2019e-6 robotic lander mission brought more than four pounds of rocks from the far side of the Moon back to Earth.
\n Credit:
\n CNSA \/ CAS<\/a><\/p>\n

With NASA planning to send astronauts back to the Moon\u2019s surface in 2027 for the first time since 1972, geologists are excited about what rocks they might find there and the scientific secrets those samples could reveal\u2014along with what resources could be mined for a future Moon base, or for renewable energy back home on Earth.<\/p>\n

Origin story<\/h2>\n

The samples brought home from the Moon in the 1970s by the Apollo missions and the Soviet Union\u2019s Luna missions cleared up quite a lot about the Moon\u2019s history<\/a>. Because the lunar samples shared strong similarities with Earth rocks, this added weight to the idea that the Moon was formed when a Mars-sized object called Theia collided with the proto-Earth roughly 4.5 billion years ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Debris from the impact was thrown into orbit around Earth and eventually coalesced into the Moon. In its early days, the Moon was entirely molten. As the magma ocean cooled over hundreds of millions of years, the Moon formed a crust and a mantle below. Giant pools of lava filled impact craters and settled into the lunar lowlands, or maria (Latin for \u201cseas\u201d), while highlands and volcanic domes loomed above them. Eventually, the volcanism died out.<\/p>\n

Without plate tectonics or weather, the only things left to alter the Moon\u2019s cold, dead surface were meteorites. A lot of the Apollo-era samples were found to have formed from the heat and pressure of impacts around 3.9 billion years ago, suggesting that they were the result of a short period of intense pummeling by space rocks called the Late Heavy Bombardment.<\/p>\n

But research since the 1970s has refined or changed this picture. Higher-resolution orbital images have revealed plenty of large impact craters that seem far older than 3.9 billion years, for example. And meteorites found on Earth, thought to have been ejected from various areas of the Moon during big impacts, have been found to span a huge range of ages.<\/p>\n

All this work together suggests<\/a> that the asteroid bombardment didn\u2019t happen in one dramatic spike but rather over an extended period lasting from perhaps 4.2 billion to 3.4 billion years ago. In this scenario, the Apollo samples dated to 3.9 billion years likely all came from just one huge impact that spewed rock over a very wide area that happened to include the Apollo-era landing sites.<\/p>\n

The Moon: Dead or alive<\/h2>\n

Greater mysteries surround volcanism on the Moon. \u201cThe canonical thing I learned in school was that the Moon had been geologically dead for billions of years,\u201d says Samuel Lawrence, a planetary scientist at NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston.<\/p>\n

The long-held theory was that a small body like the Moon should have lost its heat to space relatively quickly\u2014and a frigid, extinguished Moon shouldn\u2019t have widespread volcanic activity. Apollo-era samples suggested that most of this volcanism stopped 3 billion years ago or earlier, supporting the theory. But research over the past two decades has overturned that view.<\/p>\n

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\n This geologic map of the Moon released in 2022 by China is the most detailed global map yet published and includes information gleaned from the 2020 Chang\u2019e-5 mission.
\n Credit:
\n J. JI ET AL \/ THE 1:2,500,000-SCALE GEOLOGIC MAP OF THE GLOBAL MOON 2022. <\/a><\/p>\n

In 2014, Lawrence and colleagues posited that some patches of irregular terrain in the middle of the dark plains, or mare, spotted by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter were the result of volcanism that kept going until less than 100 million years ago<\/a>. \u201cThat is totally, totally surprising,\u201d says cosmochemist Qing-Zhu Yin of the University of California, Davis.<\/p>\n

The latest sample-return missions added more concrete evidence for recent volcanism. In 2020, the Chang\u2019e-5 robotic mission landed in Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms) \u2014 a spot picked in part because it looked geologically young given how few craters had accumulated there. Sure enough, the volcanic rocks brought home by that mission were found to be 2 billion years old<\/a>, the youngest ever retrieved from the Moon. \u201cThat was big news,\u201d says planetary geoscientist Jim Head of Brown University, who worked on NASA\u2019s Apollo missions.<\/p>\n

On top of this, when researchers trawled through thousands of glass beads found in the Chang\u2019e-5 soil samples, most of which are thought to have been created by impacts, they identified three that were volcanic\u2014and only 120 million years old<\/a>. This finding was published just last year and still needs to be verified, but if such recent dates hold up, they suggest that the Moon might still be capable of producing deep magma even today<\/a>, Yin says.<\/p>\n

All this indicates that the Moon might not have cooled as fast as everyone thought it did. It\u2019s also possible that some of the younger volcanism could have been powered by radioactive elements underground, which can generate enough heat to form magma and are known to be prevalent in certain patches of the Moon. This could explain the 120-million-year-old volcanic glass beads, for example. But not all the early volcanism can be explained this way: The Chang\u2019e-5 volcanic rocks, along with some 2.8-billion-year-old volcanic rock brought back from the far side by Chang\u2019e-6, came from source rocks not <\/em>enriched with these elements.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt throws up more questions than it answers,\u201d Neal says. \u201cIt\u2019s job security for people like me \u2014 we now have new questions to address.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lunar exploration ahead<\/h2>\n

Untangling these mysteries is challenging with so much of the Moon unexplored: While about 850 pounds of Moon rock and soil have now been brought back to Earth, it has all been from just a handful of sites.<\/p>\n

Chang\u2019e-6 expanded this picture by bringing back the first samples from the Moon\u2019s far side, taken from the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the satellite\u2019s largest, deepest and oldest impact crater. Researchers are keen to use these samples to start determining why the far side is so dramatically different from the near side. The questions that remain unanswered are why the far side has a thicker crust and is nearly devoid of mare from ancient lava oceans when compared with the near side.<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s Artemis III mission, planned for 2027 (though that could change<\/a>), aims to break more new ground by landing astronauts near the Moon\u2019s south pole\u2014in a spot that is more representative of the Moon\u2019s typical geology than the Apollo sites\u2014and bring home a bonanza of 150 to 180 pounds of samples.<\/p>\n

This site should provide fresh geological insights, along with more information about lunar water. In 2018, scientists analyzing orbital mapping data confirmed that there is water ice<\/a> at the poles\u2014but in what form no one yet knows. \u201cIs it frost on the surface? Is it discrete patches underneath the surface? Is it absorbed onto mineral grains? Is it baked into the regolith like cement?\u201d says NASA\u2019s Juliane Gross, who is helping to develop the plans for lunar sample collection and curation for the Artemis science team. \u201cWe don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

What the Artemis astronauts find could inform ongoing projects spearheaded by China and the United States to establish permanent bases on the Moon, which could benefit from the south pole\u2019s water. \u201cThat\u2019s stuff you can breathe, that\u2019s stuff you can drink, it\u2019s rocket fuel<\/a>,\u201d Lawrence says.<\/p>\n

Lunar quarry<\/h2>\n

In addition to water ice, other potentially mineable resources on the Moon have garnered attention, particularly helium-3<\/a>. This stable isotope of helium is far more plentiful on the Moon than on Earth and could be an ideal fuel for nuclear fusion<\/a> (if physicists can get that process to work). Commercial enterprises seeking to mine the Moon have popped up, including Seattle-based Interlune<\/a>, which plans to bring helium-3 back to Earth in the 2030s, followed by other resources such as rare earth elements needed for technologies like batteries. But when lunar mining will be a reality\u2014considering the logistics, the economics and the legal concerns\u2014is an open question, Lawrence says.<\/p>\n

While some people find the idea of mining the pristine Moon distasteful, there could be side benefits for mining on Earth, Neal says. With polar temperatures around -230\u00b0 C (-380\u00b0 F), lunar mining would have to be done without fluids. Developing the technologies needed for fluid-free mining could mitigate environmental concerns about wastewater and tailing fluids from mining on Earth. \u201cJust think how you could revolutionize mining on this planet,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

But first, researchers need to simply find out more about the Moon, its history, its geology and the possibility of extracting resources\u2014and that requires up-close exploration, which is sure to bring more surprises. \u201cOnce you\u2019re on the ground, you\u2019re like, oh \u2026 what\u2019s this?\u201d Gross says. She\u2019s hoping the astronauts can bring home a large haul. \u201cThe more they return, the more we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in\u00a0Knowable Magazine<\/a>, a nonprofit publication dedicated to making scientific knowledge accessible to all.\u00a0Sign up for\u00a0Knowable Magazine\u2019s newsletter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In the summer of 2024, a robotic mission landed for the first time on the far side of the Moon. The Chinese Chang\u2019e-6 lander planted a flag, dug up more than four pounds of rock and soil, and brought it … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1216042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ars-technica","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1216042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1216042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1216042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1216042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}