China’s Chang’e 6 Mission Discovered Uncommon Meteorite Fragments on Moon

Surprise Meteorite Debris Uncovered on Moon’s Far Side

By Jenna Ahart & Nature journal

Sifting by way of the first-ever rock samples collected from the far aspect of the Moon, scientists in China have unearthed a shock: fragments of a uncommon sort of meteorite that would assist to piece collectively the Solar System’s historical past. The particles — scooped up by China’s Chang’e-6 mission and returned to Earth in June last year — resembles materials from asteroids that carry mud pre-dating the Solar System. Studying the chemical composition of this particles might assist to hint how asteroids seeded planetary our bodies resembling Earth and the Moon with unstable compounds, together with water.

“The Chang’e-6 mission has a list of major questions to answer, but this wasn’t even on that list,” says Yuqi Qian, an Earth and planetary scientist on the University of Hong Kong, who was not concerned in analysing the fragments. “It’s such an unexpected and important finding.”

The authors reported their discovery earlier this week within the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Near and much

Most missions which have returned rocks from the Moon have sampled the floor dealing with Earth — the close to aspect — which has fewer craters and has hosted higher volcanic exercise. Chang’e-6, nonetheless, landed on the far aspect, on the Moon’s largest, deepest crater — the South Pole–Aitken Basin, which accounts for about one-quarter of the Moon’s floor space. One of the principle aims was to raised perceive why the far aspect appears to be like so completely different from the close to aspect.

Another was to discover the massive basin, which scientists suppose was created when an asteroid smashed into the Moon about 4 billion years in the past. The crater might be wealthy with fragments from that and different asteroid impacts, alongside rock from the lunar mantle — the layer beneath the crust — dredged up by the collisions.

But the invention of the uncommon meteorite fragments was a shock. At first, the researchers thought the samples got here from the Moon’s mantle. But after analysing the iron, manganese and zinc ranges within the particles, they discovered a mismatch with different lunar supplies, indicating they weren’t from the Moon itself. So, the workforce examined the relative ranges of three oxygen isotopes within the samples; these ratios are “like human fingerprints” and might inform you what sort of planetary physique the particles comes from, says Mang Lin, an writer of the paper and geochemist on the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry (GIG). “This approach is basically space forensics.”

The isotope signature intently matched that of two rocky asteroids already studied by people, named Ryugu and Bennu. NASA grabbed samples from Bennu in 2020, and the Japanese area company collected fragments of Ryugu in 2019. Both asteroids held mud grains pre-dating the Solar System, in addition to elusive unstable compounds resembling water.

Analysis of the brand new fragments appears to substantiate that this sort of asteroid delivered a major provide of water and different compounds to the Moon. By additional learning the chemical composition of the samples, scientists may have the ability to zero in on what half such area rocks performed within the growth of Earth and the Moon. The discovering is very thrilling as a result of this sort of meteorite hardly ever survives when it hits Earth, so samples are uncommon, says co-author Jintuan Wang, a geosciences researcher additionally at GIG. “These materials are extremely fragile and tend to break apart when they enter Earth’s atmosphere.”

Team chief Yi-Gang Xu, additionally at GIG, thinks that by learning extra Chang’e-6 samples, the group may pinpoint the age of such meteorite fragments, which might assist to find out whether or not their mother or father asteroid created the South Pole–Aitken Basin.

This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on October 22, 2025.

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