Iran Press/ Sci & Tech: The rock samples brought back from the Moon in December by China's Chang'e-5 mission were really young.
It's all relative, of course, but the analysis shows the basalt material - the solidified remnants of a lava flow - to be just two billion years old, BBC reported.
Compare this with the samples returned by the Apollo astronaut missions. They were all over three billion years of age.
The findings are reported in the journal Science.
China's robotic Chang'e-5 mission was sent to a site on the lunar nearside called Oceanus Procellarum.
It was carefully chosen to add to the sum of knowledge gained from previous sample returns - the last of which was conducted by a Soviet probe in 1976.
Xiaochao Che and colleagues at the Sensitive High-Resolution Ion MicroProbe (SHRIMP) Center in Beijing led the Chang'e-5 dating analysis but worked with a broad international consortium.
The age data they've produced is fascinating because it proves volcanism continued on the Moon long after one might have expected such a small body to have cooled down and given up the activity.
Theorists will now be thinking through new ideas for what kind of heat source might have sustained the late-stage behavior.
214
Read More:
Hubble finds water vapor in atmosphere of Jupiter's moon Ganymede
Moon wobble to cause coastal flooding in 2030s: NASA
