They were collected more than 50 years ago by the Apollo 16 astronauts and these samples continue to tell us new information about the lunar soil and its history. A new study reports some discoveries about the history of the Apollo 16 site.
About 96 kilograms of lunar rocks were brought back to Earth during NASA’s Apollo 16 mission in 1972, the last step before the United States withdrew from returning to the Moon. With help from Ken Mattingly in orbit, moonwalkers John W. Young and Charles Duke harvested. Did they doubt that even today we will make interesting discoveries?
Exposure to wind and asteroids
A study led by Mark Nottingham of the University of Glasgow, today gives us new clues about the role of the solar wind and meteorites in the formation of the Moon’s surface in the region of Descartes Crater, where Apollo 16 landed.
Nottingham and his team passed the samples SpectrometerSpectrometer Of On a large scaleOn a large scale To assess composition. He felt the presence of GazGaz Stuck in the nobles FusionFusion Moon dust and regolithregolith Due to meteor impact. These gases show that they have been affected by the solar wind and its effects for a long time.AsteroidAsteroid. This means that the surface of the Moon has been less shaped by large asteroid impacts on the Moon over the past two billion years.
Searching for noble gases as the goal of the Artemis mission?
The samples Nottingham and his team studied range in age from 2.5 billion years to less than a billion years. The oldest were drawn to the surface by recent meteorite impacts.
Noble gases are tracers of the Moon’s surface history. Recently, the Research Institute AstrophysicsAstrophysics And the Toulouse astronomers searched for radon using the Dorn instrument aboard Chang’e 6. Nottingham suggests that their role as witnesses to our creation is taken a little more seriously in space exploration. solar systemsolar systemand that this role be taken into account in the selection of landing sites for the Artemis mission.
