A fresh analysis of lunar dust collected by Apollo 16 astronauts in 1972 offers a clearer picture of the effects of asteroid strikes on the moon, allowing scientists to reconstruct billions of years of lunar history. The findings could also help upcoming crewed missions pinpoint precious natural resources for establishing moon bases, scientists say.
After landing in the heavily-cratered Descartes region in the lunar highlands, astronauts John Young, Charles Duke and Ken Mattingly collected roughly 200 pounds (96 kg) of material from the moon's surface. Chemical analyses of soil-like pebbles in those samples, which the astronauts had gathered by raking across the landing site, have revealed the presence of various noble gasses including argon and xenon. These trapped gasses serve as useful timestamps of space weather processes like solar wind and asteroid impacts that have helped shape and reshape the moon's surface over billions of years.
Most of the samples collected during the Apollo era have already been scrutinized. To take advantage of new science and technology, NASA cracked open one of the last sealed samples, collected during the Apollo 17 mission, just two years ago. Much of our knowledge about the moon and its evolution comes from these samples, including the moon's true age being 40 million years older than we thought.
Source: www.space.com
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