A sample of the Moon’s far side retrieved by Chang’e-6 contains 2.83-billion-year-old basalt
Zexian Cui, Qing Yang, Yanqiang Zhang, Chengyuan Wang, Haiyang Xian, Zhiming Chen, Zhiyong Xiao, Yuqi Qian, J. W. Head, C. R. Neal, Long Xiao, Fanglu Luo, Jingyou Chen, Peng‐Li He, Yonghua Cao, Qin Zhou, Fangfang Huang, Linli Chen, Bo Wei, Jintuan Wang, Ya‐Nan Yang, Shan Li, Yiping Yang, Xiaoju Lin, Jianxi Zhu, Le Zhang, Yi‐Gang Xu
Abstract
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.