More than 50 years after humans first began soft-landing spacecraft on the moon, it remains a treacherous feat with more than half of missions failing. Here’s why.
The moon, once a hotbed of geological activity billions of years ago, now preserves its turbulent past through features such as extinct volcanoes and lava tubes.
iTWire Friday, 11 June 2021 00:58 Lunar sample tells ancient story with Curtin Uni researchers help
Shares Apollo 17 Mission: NASA/Gene Cernan
Curtin University researchers have helped uncover the four billion year old story of a lunar sample brought from the moon to earth, by the manned Apollo 17 mission more than 50 years ago.
The global research collaboration, involving scientists from the UK, Canada, Sweden and Australia, aimed to analyse the ancient rock sample through a modern lens to find out its age, which crater it came from and its geological trajectory.
That modern lens was provided, in part, by both
Curtin University’s Geoscience Atom Probe Facility and Space Science and Technology Centre (SSTC) where the research team was able to use the most advanced analytical equipment to accurately date the sample and perform sophisticated numerical impact simulations to determine the source crater.