Washington, Dec 23: A Chinese rover that landed on the Moon’s surface two years ago has found tantalising clues to the period of lur volcanism in 40 years while discovering a new moon rock. Chang’e-3, an unmanned lur mission, that touched down on the northern part of the Imbrium basin on Moon - one of the most prominent of the lava-filled impact basins visible from Earth - has spotted volcanic rocks unlike those returned by Apollo and Lu missions.
“We now have ‘ground truth’ for our remote sensing, a well-characterised sample in a key location,” said Bradley L Jolliff, the Scott Rudolph Professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St Louis. He is a participant in an educatiol collaboration that helped alyse Chang’e-3 mission data. “We see the same sigl from orbit in other places, so we now know that those other places probably have similar basalts,” he added. (IANS)