China’s Chang’e 5 lunar mission brought back youngest rock samples ever collected on the moon

Last year’s Chinese lunar mission brought back the youngest rocks ever found on the moon, international researchers have found.

An analysis of the basaltic volcanic rocks collected by the Chang’e-5 probe last December concluded that they had been formed from magma from a volcanic eruption about 2 billion years ago – around a billion years later than the formation of the moon rocks that have previously been analysed.