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New minerals on the moon explaining the mystery of the lunar landscape
Two new minerals have been identified by researchers analysing moon soil samples collected by the Chang’e 5 mission.
Scientists could be a step closer to solving the mystery of how the surface of the moon got its weathered and cratered appearance, after the discovery of unique minerals in lunar soil samples collected by the Chang’e 5 mission. Titanium compounds, including Ti2O, which have never been seen in natural samples on Earth, were found on the surface of a tiny glass bead brought back by China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft in 2020, according to researchers from the Institute of Geochemistry in Guiyang and their colleagues in Guangzhou and Macau. The minerals had probably formed as a result of intense vaporisation and deposition – the transition of gas into solid without passing through the liquid phase – triggered by the constant, powerful bombardment of micrometeorites from space, the team wrote in the journal Nature Astronomy last week.
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