China set to bring back first rocks from the Moon in more than 40 years

China set to bring back first rocks from the Moon in more than 40 years

4 years ago
Anonymous $RGO3jP_V_c

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/china-set-bring-back-first-rocks-moon-more-40-years

Chang’e-5 is targeting Mons Rümker, a volcanic mound that may contain 1.3-billion-year-old lava.

On Earth, deep time is an open book. By measuring trace radioactive compounds in rocks that decay with metronomic regularity, dating experts have learned when oceans opened, volcanoes erupted, and mass extinctions struck. But the story is muddled elsewhere in the Solar System because records are sparse. Scientists estimate ages on the Moon and the rocky planets from the number of craters that pock their surfaces. They have fixed dates from just nine places, all on the Moon: the six Apollo and three Soviet Luna sites from which samples were returned to laboratories on Earth.