Moon dust 'rarer than gold' arrives in UK from China
The first samples of Moon rock brought back to Earth in nearly 50 years have arrived in the UK - on loan from China.
The tiny grains of dust are now locked inside a safe in a high security facility in Milton Keynes - we were given the first look at them.
Professor Mahesh Anand is the only scientist in the UK to have been loaned this extremely rare material, which he describes as "more precious than gold dust".
"Nobody in the world had access to China's samples, so this is a great honour and a huge privilege," he says.
After grinding and zapping the dust with lasers, Prof Anand's team hope to answer fundamental questions about how the Moon formed and about the early years of planet Earth.
Inside the grains of dust could be evidence to back up scientists' theory that the Moon was made from the debris thrown out when Earth struck a Mars-sized planet 4.5 billion years ago.
China collected the rocks on its Chang'e 5 space mission in 2020 when it landed on a volcanic area called Mons Rümker.
A robotic arm drilled into the soil to collect 2kg of material, which was brought back to Earth in a capsule which landed in Inner Mongolia.
It was the first successful lunar sampling since a Soviet mission in 1976 and catapulted China into a leading position in the new space race.
Now, following a long tradition of global collaboration between space scientists, China has for the first time granted seven international researchers samples to make new discoveries.
The tiny vials were handed to Prof Anand at a glamorous ceremony in Beijing last week, where he met colleagues from Russia, Japan, Pakistan and Europe.
"It was almost like a parallel universe - and China is so far ahead of us in terms of their investment in space programmes," he said.
He returned to the UK with the precious cargo in the safest place he could think of - his hand luggage.
At his lab at the Open University in Milton Keynes, we step onto sticky mats to clean our shoes and put on plastic gloves, gowns, hair nets and hoods.
The environment inside this high security room must be spotless to prevent contamination.
If Earthly material mixes with these extra-terrestrial specs, it could permanently ruin the analysis Prof Anand's team will do.
We crouch down on the floor in front of a row of safes. Prof Anand unlocks one and carefully pulls out a ziplock bag with three containers the size of boxes that could keep a necklace.
Wedged firmly in each one is a see-through vial with a dusting of dark grey at the bottom.
That is the Moon dust.
It looks underwhelming, but it is humbling to think of its cosmic journey.
And Prof Anand says they don't need any more than this 60mg in total.
"Here, the small is mighty. Believe me, it is enough to keep us busy for years to come because we specialise in working on the micro," he adds.
In a lab down the corridor, technician Kay Knight will be the first person to actually work on the grains when the vials are opened.
She's been cutting and grindings pieces of rocks for 36 years, but this will be the first time she's worked on something straight from the lunar surface.
"I'm extremely excited," she says, after showing us how she cuts meteorites using a diamond blade.
"But I'm nervous - there's not much of the samples and they can't really go and get more very easily. This is high stakes," she adds.
After she prepares the samples, they will go into two more labs.
In one, we see a machine with an intricate network of countless tubes, valves and wires.
Technician Sasha Verchovskyhas been building it since the early 1990s. He shows us the small cylinder where the specs of dust can be heated to 1400 Celsius. That will help them extract carbon, nitrogen and nobel gases.
This is completely unique, and is one of the reasons Prof Anand believes his lab was chosen to receive the rare samples.
James Malley, a research technician, operates a machine that can work out how much oxygen is contained within the specs of dust.
He shows us a test run of what he will do.
"I'm going to hit that grain on the tray with a laser," he says, showing the scene magnified on a computer screen.
"It's going to start to glow, and you will see it melt inwards," he says.
The team has a year to finish their research. By the end, their search for answers will probably end up destroying the samples.
But China has gone further since the Chang'e 5 mission.
In 2024 its Chang'e 6 launch brought back the first samples from the far side of the Moon. It's a deeply mysterious place that might have evidence of long-quiet volcanic lava flows.
"I very much hope that this is the beginning of a long-term collaboration between China and international scientists," says Prof Anand.
"A lot of us built our careers working on samples returned by Apollo missions, and I think this is a fantastic tradition to follow. I hope that other countries will follow suit," he adds.
China's Chang'e-5 mission returns Moon samples
Who owns the Moon? A new space race means it could be up for grabs
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Yahoo
SpaceX's String of Starship Failures Continues With Massive Rocket Explosion
SpaceX's ongoing mission to prepare Starship spacecraft for trips to the moon and, eventually, Mars suffered a setback when a spacecraft exploded this week in South Texas. The explosion happened during what SpaceX called routine testing in preparation for Starship's 10th flight since 2023, which was expected to happen later this month. SpaceX uses a different rocket design to launch its Starlink internet satellites. On X, the space company wrote, "On Wednesday, June 18 at approximately 11 p.m. CT, the Starship preparing for the tenth flight test experienced a major anomaly while on a test stand at Starbase." The company said that no one was hurt in the explosion and that while there were no hazards to people near the site, "we ask that individuals do not attempt to approach the area." Raw video of the explosion was posted online by several outlets, including Rocket Future. The explosion marks the fourth Starship failure this year for SpaceX, the most recent happening in May with the loss of contact with a Starship post-launch and then the spacecraft breaking apart upon reentry. In an apparent reference to the incident, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk called it, "Just a scratch" in a post on X.
Washington Post
a day ago
- Washington Post
It turns out weather on other planets is a lot like on Earth
What do the clouds on Jupiter, dust storms on Mars and rainstorms on Titan all have in common? They look like they belong on Earth. As we venture through the universe, scientists are finding uncanny — and sometimes unexpected — hints of Earth on other planets and moons. Clouds on Jupiter swirl like ocean eddies on Earth, and dust storms that act like hurricanes can inundate Mars. Even though these celestial bodies can be hundreds of million miles away from us, the same laws of physics apply, and what happens there can help us learn more about worlds that humans have yet to visit.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Latest Starship Explosion Drastically Decreases SpaceX's Chances of Reaching Mars Without Having to Wait Years
With tech billionaire Elon Musk out of the White House after his disastrous turn as a bureaucrat, he can now focus on more pressing subjects — such as his SpaceX Starship rockets that keep on exploding into fiery columns of fire, with the latest dramatic failure this past Wednesday in Texas, when the massive spacecraft hadn't even left the ground yet. This recent setback ratchets up the pressure on Musk even further, who faces a hard deadline and steep technical challenges in his vaunted goal to reach Mars. Much of that deadline is self-imposed, as CNN points out in an excoriating new breakdown of the situation. In May, Musk said he plans to send an unmanned crew to Mars next year, but the latest blast — the latest in a string of similar explosions that have plagued Starship — seem almost certain to set him back enough to force SpaceX to miss a crucial celestial launch opportunity called a transfer window. Depending on the position of Earth and Mars from one another, the distance between the two planets can vary from 35 million to over 200 million miles. To make the journey shorter and to save cost on fuel, explorers must time their rocket launch during the transfer window, a period when Mars and Earth are in an optimal alignment that minimizes the journey's length. The next transfer window for Mars is in late 2026 and will only last for a few weeks; miss it, and the journey will be way more expensive and far longer to be practical. To still make the deadline, Musk faces the extraordinary challenge of fixing any technical challenges with Starship and present an upgraded version of the vehicle and the Super Heavy rocket booster in time before the Mars transfer window next year. In addition, SpaceX has to figure out how to fuel Starship, which needs to be topped off with propellant in orbit before making its journey to the red planet. This would involve launching numerous Starships into space and using them to fuel up the one headed to the Red Planet — a process that will pose a spectacular logistical challenge of its own. "We've never done that," Bruce Jakosky, professor emeritus of geological sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, told CNN. "Nobody's done that — transferring fuel from one spacecraft to another in orbit autonomously." Another technical challenge SpaceX needs to solve is Starship's heat shield, which has to survive entry into Mar's atmosphere and the journey back to Earth. Back in May, Musk himself conceded that it posed "one of the toughest problems to solve." And all that is without getting into the technical feasibility of human flight to Mars, including how to shield any crew from cosmic radiation. Before any of that, of course, Starship needs to stop exploding. More on SpaceX: Elon's Explosion at Trump Appears to Have Cost Him a HUGE Deal
