{"id":246518,"date":"2025-10-23T16:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T16:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/246518\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T16:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T16:41:10","slug":"surprise-meteorite-debris-uncovered-on-moons-far-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/246518\/","title":{"rendered":"Surprise meteorite debris uncovered on Moon\u2019s far side"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sifting through the first-ever rock samples collected from the far side of the Moon, scientists in China have unearthed a surprise: fragments of a rare type of meteorite that could help to piece together the Solar System\u2019s history. The debris \u2014 scooped up by China\u2019s Chang\u2019e-6 mission and returned to Earth in June last year<\/a> \u2014 resembles material from asteroids that carry dust pre-dating the Solar System. Studying the chemical composition of this debris could help to trace how asteroids seeded planetary bodies such as Earth and the Moon with volatile compounds, including water.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chang\u2019e-6 mission has a list of major questions to answer, but this wasn\u2019t even on that list,\u201d says Yuqi Qian, an Earth and planetary scientist at the University of Hong Kong, who was not involved in analysing the fragments. \u201cIt\u2019s such an unexpected and important finding.\u201d<\/p>\n

The authors reported their discovery earlier this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Near and far<\/p>\n

Most missions that have returned rocks from the Moon have sampled the surface facing Earth \u2014 the near side \u2014 which has fewer craters and has hosted greater volcanic activity. Chang\u2019e-6, however, landed on the far side, at the Moon\u2019s largest, deepest crater \u2014 the South Pole\u2013Aitken Basin, which accounts for about one-quarter of the Moon\u2019s surface area. One of the main objectives was to better understand why the far side looks so different from the near side.<\/p>\n

Another was to explore the huge basin, which scientists think was created when an asteroid smashed into the Moon about four billion years ago. The crater is probably rich with fragments from that and other asteroid impacts, alongside rock from the lunar mantle \u2014 the layer beneath the crust \u2014 dredged up by the collisions.<\/p>\n

\"Microscope<\/p>\n

One of the rare meteorite fragments discovered on the Moon\u2019s far side under an electron microscope.Credit: Yi-Gang Xu<\/p>\n

But the discovery of the rare meteorite fragments was a surprise. At first, the researchers thought the samples came from the Moon\u2019s mantle. But after analysing the iron, manganese and zinc levels in the debris, they found a mismatch with other lunar materials, indicating they were not from the Moon itself. So, the team examined the relative levels of three oxygen isotopes in the samples; these ratios are \u201clike human fingerprints\u201d and can tell you what type of planetary body the debris comes from, says Mang Lin, an author of the paper and geochemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences\u2019s Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry (GIG). \u201cThis approach is basically space forensics.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sifting through the first-ever rock samples collected from the far side of the Moon, scientists in China have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[63262,1159,1160,16492,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-246518","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-geochemistry","9":"tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","10":"tag-multidisciplinary","11":"tag-planetary-science","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}