A sample of the Moon’s far side retrieved by Chang’e-6 contains 2.83-billion-year-old basalt

Remote sensing observations have shown that the far side of the Moon (lunar farside) has different geology and rock composition to those of the nearside, including the abundances of potassium, rare earth elements, and phosphorus (collectively known as KREEP). The Chang’e-6 (CE-6) spacecraft collecte...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science
Main Authors: Cui, Zexian, Yang, Qing, Zhang, Yan-Qiang, Wang, Chengyuan, Xian, Haiyang, Chen, Zhiming, Xiao, Zhiyong, Qian, Yuqi, Head, James W., Neal, Clive R., Xiao, Long, Luo, Fanglu, Chen, Jingyou, He, Pengli, Cao, Yonghua, Zhou, Qin, Huang, Fangfang, Chen, Linli, Wei, Bo, Wang, Jintuan, Yang, Ya-Nan, Li, Shan, Yang, Yiping, Lin, Xiaoju, Zhu, Jianxi, Zhang, Le, Xu, Yi-Gang
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2024
Subjects:
Aitken
South Pole
South pole
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adt1093
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.adt1093
Description
Summary:Remote sensing observations have shown that the far side of the Moon (lunar farside) has different geology and rock composition to those of the nearside, including the abundances of potassium, rare earth elements, and phosphorus (collectively known as KREEP). The Chang’e-6 (CE-6) spacecraft collected samples from the South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin on the farside and brought them to Earth. We used lead-lead and rubidium-strontium isotope systems to date low-titanium basalt in a CE-6 sample, finding a consistent age of 2830 (±5) million years. We interpret this as the date of volcanism in SPA and incorporate it into lunar crater chronology. Strontium, neodymium, and lead isotopes indicate that the volcanic magma was from a lunar mantle source depleted in incompatible elements and containing almost no KREEP component.

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