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Context

• On December 16, 2020, China’s Chang’e-5 lunar mission delivered to Earth nearly 2 kg of rocky fragments and dust from the Moon.
• The team has modelled the potential contributions from specific craters: Aristarchus, Kepler, Copernicus, Harding, and Harpalus.
• Now, scientists presented the early-stage findings that use geological mapping to link ‘exotic’ fragments in the collected samples to features near the landing site.

About Chang'e 5

• It is the fifth lunar exploration mission of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, and China's first lunar sample-return mission.
• The mission comprised of a lunar orbiter, a lander and an ascent probe that lifted the lunar samples back into orbit and returned them back to Earth.
• The Chang'e 5 landing site is in the Northern Oceanus Procellarum near a huge volcanic complex, Mons Rümker, located in the northwest lunar near side.
• The Chang'e 5 landing site, named Statio Tianchuan, is within the Procellarum KREEP Terrain, with elevated heat-producing elements, thin crust, and prolonged volcanism.
• This area is characterized by some of the youngest mare basalts on the Moon (~1.21 billion years old), with elevated titanium, thorium, and olivine abundances, which have never been sampled by Apollo or Luna mission.
• Chang'e-5 will help scientists understand what was happening late in the moon's history, as well as how Earth and the solar system evolved.

The Findings

• 90% of the materials collected by Chang’e-5 likely derive from the landing site and its immediate surroundings, which are of a type termed ‘mare basalts’.
• These volcanic rocks are visible to us as the darker grey areas that spilled over much of the nearside of the Moon as ancient eruptions of lava.
• Yet 10% percent of the fragments have distinctly different, ‘exotic’ chemical compositions.
• Scientists have traced these glassy droplets to extinct volcanic vents known as ‘Rima Mairan’ and ‘Rima Sharp’.

Significance

• The distinct 10% fragments may preserve records of other parts of the lunar surface as well as hints of the types of space rocks that have impacted the Moon’s surface.
• These fragments could give insights into past episodes of energetic, fountain-like volcanic activity on the Moon.

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/what-samples-brought-back-by-china-mission-tell-us-about-moon-7533019/

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