Rocks gathered by Chang'e 5 rover show magma once spewed from the moon

The moon may have been volcanically active more recently than we thought. Analysis of lunar material brought back by China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft has shown that the magmatic rocks where it landed are less than 2 billion years old, indicating that the history of the moon is more complicated than researchers realised.

The region where Chang’e 5 touched down, called Oceanus Procellarum, was expected to contain relatively fresh rocks, but we didn’t know just how fresh. Researchers analysed two small samples the mission returned and found that they solidified…