Researchers in Hong Kong eye far side of moon soil samples from China’s Chang’e-6 mission
- Polytechnic University also says it recently secured loan of lunar soil samples collected by Chang’e-5 mission in 2020
“The lunar regolith is very very precious, even if you’re able to get 400 milligrams – which is 0.4g – even for one crystal or one particle of the lunar regolith, we will be able to actually tell a lot of stories from there,” said Yung Kai-leung, chair professor from PolyU’s industrial and systems engineering department.
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China’s Chang’e-6 mission returns to Earth with first samples from moon’s far side
He said the scientific properties would be studied to understand its components “such as the water content in the form of molecules and the conditions in the formation of the regolith in order to discover how the moon was formed as well as that of the universe”.
“The Chang’e-5 mission was the only lander that could [bring] back around 1.7kg of lunar regolith to Earth in the last 40 years and it was from a region many millions of years younger than previously brought back samples over 44 years ago,” Yung said.
Some of the samples were collected by the sampling and packaging equipment developed and manufactured at PolyU.
Of the 1.7kg lunar regolith from the near side of the moon from the Chang’e-5 mission, the university received 400mg of a surface soil sample and 42.6mg of a subsurface soil sample, with researchers saying such resources would give them an edge in applying for samples from the Chang’e-6 mission.
