This history of moon is sometimes feel enigmatic. According to a study the ex aimed the soil samples from the moon from a mission volcanic activity helped creates moon’s surface mineralogy as recently 2 billion years ago. It left an iron rich and high calcium surface basalt the is geographically younger then the lunar geology thought.
A group of scientist from National Observatories of Chinese Academy published their results in Nature Communications in order to determine the compositions of soil samples from the moon. From studies based on Apollo and lunar mission suggested active volcanism share the lunar mare between 4.3 billion ad 3.1 billion years ago. The lunar mare for the dark basalt plains formed volcanic activity trig erred by ancient large asteroid impacts on the far side of the moon.
Though we can infer a lot about the mineral composition of the moon remotely, having actual lunar soil samples here on Earth in our lab for analyses opened up the possibility of a much more thorough and precise compositional analysis,” Li said. Li and his team analyzed their soil samples using spectroscopic techniques. To analyze the samples the researchers measure the wavelength of light absorbed and reflected when exposed to precisely calibrated x-ray and visible light emissions.
In the future days additional samples brought back as part of future mission will continue to find new understanding of the moon’s surface and have potentially big implications for space explorations as the scientific community find ways to utilize moon’s mineralogy and possible water.
