Moon rocks retrieved in 2020 raise questions about the satellite's recent history

Months after China's Chang'e-5 mission retrieved rock samples from the moon in December 2020, scientists have now found that the rocks are a little over a billion years younger than those brought by NASA's Apollo 11 in 1969 and Soviet Union's Luna 24 robot probe in 1976. These findings are being considered significant as the scientists say that it hints towards the presence of liquid magma or lava on the part of the Moon China's Chang'e-5 picked samples from. These findings have made scientists wonder what made the Moon hot enough to produce magma. 

The data fills a two-billion-year gap

Planetary scientist at Missouri's Washington University in St. Louis, Brad Jolliff says that the data retrieved by China is the perfect sample that can fill a two-billion-year gap. According to a report by Space.com, the rocks brought to earth by Apollo 11 astronauts and those brought under the Chinese mission stretches across three to one billion years.

The team of researchers, who published their findings in the journal Science have dated the rocks to be about 1.97 billion years old. The samples were brought from the Moon's Oceanus Procellarum region and are basalt rocks. In an interview with Gizmodo, Katherine Joy, a lunar geologist at the University of Manchester, said that results of the study show emergence of the rocks from lava that is one billion years younger than any other dated lava flows sampled on the Moon. She further revealed that the retrieved basalt rocks fit nowhere between the previously seen Moon rocks and that they suggest origins from a different lunar part. 

These data have made the scientists work on determining what exactly heated the Moon enough to trigger the production of lava and the generation of volcanic eruptions. Although the reason behind the melting of the rocks nearly two billion years ago remains unclear, scientists speculate that temperatures on the lunar surface or the lunar impacts it endured must have had a share. 

China's Chang'e-5 mission

The Chinese capsule touched down Earth on December 17, 2020, with a lunar substance in more than 40 years. The spacecraft's return had marked the first time scientists have obtained fresh samples of lunar rocks since the former Soviet Union's Luna 24 robot probe in 1976, reported the Associated Press. 

Image: Twitter/@PeaseRoland