Studies on the moon, the satellite of our world, are continuing at full speed. In this context, NASA is preparing to perform the Artemis mission after the Apollo mission in 1972. In this mission, the company even searched for a vehicle to transport the astronauts to the take-off area. Even in our country, officials from the Turkish Space Agency made statements about Moon missions.
While everyone was working on our satellite in question and aiming to obtain information about its formation and soil structure, a development came from China that destroyed some of the things we knew before. According to the information, researchers found the youngest known specimen of Moon rock in a mission they carried out late last year.
The youngest specimen is 1.97 billion years old (previously thought to be 3 billion)
Samples obtained in the mission named Chang’e-5 carried out by the China National Space Agency in December 2020; It has been studied by researchers from China, Australia, Sweden and the USA. The mission, in which a total of 1.7kg of the Moon sample was brought to Earth, is also the first since it was carried out in 1976.
Samples obtained with this task were examined with a high-resolution precision ion microprobe (SHRIMP). It progressed by building upon the techniques used when examining the first Apollo samples brought in in the 1970s.
At the end of the studies, it was learned that these volcanic rocks are 1.97 billion years old. This makes them younger than any lunar material previously discovered.
Volcanic activity on the moon occurred between 3 and 4 billion years ago:
When the Moon was first formed, volcanic activities were intense, just like on our planet. However, scientists examining previously obtained volcanic rock samples and lunar meteorite remains say that most of these volcanic activities took place between 3 and 4 billion years ago.
For volcanic activities to take place, there must naturally be a heat movement inside the planet. For the moon, too, this activity was thought to have been lost more than 2 billion years ago. This is “If the heat activity disappeared long ago, how are these volcanic specimens 2 billion years old?” raises questions such as:
The main focus of ongoing work is to shed light on this question. With the study in question, our knowledge of both our solar system and examples on other planets will increase greatly. We will be keeping you informed of developments on the subject.
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