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The Chinese space program began in 2019 with a significant milestone when the Lunar Lander Chang'e 4 landed successfully on the far side of the Moon. It was the first time that a country had achieved such a feat, the landing itself being only the first of many goals that China had for the mission.
In the days that followed, the lander deployed a rover, took pictures, and even grew plants. His rover also had some work to do and a new research paper published in Nature reveals that some of the readings collected on lunar surface samples were rather surprising to scientists.
Today, the moon is relatively calm and cool, but researchers do not think this has always been the case. It was thought that the young Moon was formerly largely covered with overheated liquid rock that flowed to the surface before cooling down.
While the rock was still hot, scientists assume that denser minerals would naturally have settled deep beneath the surface. Once the oceans of magma completely cooled, heavy minerals such as pyroxene and olivine would have already been buried. This idea was apparently questioned when the Yutu-2 Chinese robot collected samples clearly containing olivine and pyroxene, but researchers explain very well why they found these minerals on the surface.
Chang'e 4 landed at a place on the moon known as Von Kármán crater, in an area known as the South Pole-Aitken Basin (SPA). The basin is what remains of a massive crater that formed long ago, and the researchers believe that the presence of heavy minerals in the surface samples collected by the rover is evidence a large impact may have penetrated deep enough to eject a large amount of rock. and the dust of the Moon's mantle, covering the area with materials that would otherwise have been buried.
"The geological context suggests that these materials were excavated under the soil of the SPA by the impact crater of Finsen, with a diameter of 72 km, and transported to the landing site," write the researchers. . "The continued exploration of Yutu-2 will target these materials on the ground of the Von Kármán crater to understand their geological context, origin and abundance and to evaluate the possibility of return sample scenarios."
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