BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) — A Chinese research team has discovered geological evidence of at least four layers of volcanic lava flows that flooded the landing region of the Chang’e lunar exploration mission -5, according to a press release from the National Space Science Center (NSSC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
China’s Chang’e-5 mission brought back to Earth a total of 1,731 grams of lunar samples by the end of 2020. The mission’s landing region in the northwestern region of Oceanus Procellarum is believed to be also known as the Ocean of Storms, being one of the youngest basaltic units on the lunar surface.
Scientists say the region is rich in heat-producing elements such as uranium, thorium and potassium, which are believed to be responsible for maintaining long-standing volcanic activity on the moon.
“Therefore, the study of basalt thickness and its eruption rate in the Chang’e-5 landing zone will further improve the understanding of lunar volcanic activity and the history of internal thermal evolution ” said Du Jun, who led the research project. .
To address these questions, researchers from the NSSC and other institutes in China estimated the thickness of mare basalts in the Chang’e-5 landing region. Their results show that at least four magmatic eruptions took place in the landing region, with an average thickness of 230 meters, 70 meters, 4 meters and 36 meters, respectively.
In addition, the study also shows that the eruption rate of mare basalts in the Chang’e-5 landing region increased significantly about 2 billion years ago.
“These results are expected to provide new constraints for the numerical model that can explain the duration and scale of volcanic activities on the Moon,” said Du.
The research results were recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. ■