The Moon Powder “Larger than Gold” arrives in the UK from China

The first Moon Rock samples, returned to Earth for nearly 50 years, arrive in the UK – a loan from China.

The small grains of dust are already closed in a safe at 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 who has been loan this extremely rare material that he describes as “more aimed than gold dust.”

“No one in the world had access to China’s samples, so it’s a great honor and a huge privilege,” he says.

After grinding and attaching the dust with the lasers, Prof. Anand’s team hopes to answer fundamental questions about how the moon was formed and the early years on planet Earth.

Inside the grains of the dust, it can be evidence of supporting scientists theory that the moon is made of debris discarded when the Earth hits a planet the size of Mars 4.5 billion years ago.

China collected the rocks on its space mission Chang’e 5 in 2020 when it landed on a volcanic zone called Mons Rümker.

A robotic arm drilled into the soil to collect 2 kg of material that was returned to the ground in a capsule that landed in internal Mongolia.

It was the first successful lunar sample after a Soviet mission in 1976 and catapulted China in a leading position in the new space race.

Now, after a long tradition of global cooperation between space scientists, China for the first time has provided seven international researchers access to the samples to allow them to make new discoveries.

The small vials were handed over to Prof. Anand at a glittering ceremony in Beijing last week, where he met with 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 programs,” he said.

He returned to the UK with the precious cargo at the most secure place he could think of – for his hand luggage.

At his laboratory at the Milton Open University of Milton Keynes, we step on sticky mats to clean our shoes and put on plastic gloves, dresses, hair nets and hoods.

The environment inside this room with high security must be flawless to prevent contamination.

If the earth’s material is mixed with these alien spots, it can constantly ruin the analysis of Prof. Anand’s team.

We decrease on the floor in front of a number of safes. Prof. Anand unlocks one and carefully removes a zipper bag with three containers the size of boxes that could keep the necklace.

Klyno firmly in each of them is a transparent vial with dark gray powder at the bottom.

This is the lunar dust.

It seems undermining, but it is humble to think about your space trip.

And Prof. Anand says they don’t need more than this 60 mg total.

“Here, the little one is powerful. Believe me, it is enough to keep us busy for years, because we specialize in the work on the micro,” he adds.

In a lab down the hallway, technician Kay Knight will be the first person to actually work on the nipples when the vials are open.

She cuts and grinds pieces of rocks for 36 years, but this will be the first time he works on something straight from the moon’s surface.

“I’m extremely excited,” she says, after showing us how she cuts meteorites using a diamond blade.

“But I’m nervous – there are not many samples and they really can’t go and get easier. It’s high bets,” she adds.

After she has been preparing the samples, they will enter two more laboratories.

In one, we see a machine with a complex network of countless pipes, valves and wires.

Technician Sasha Verkhovski has been building it since the early 1990s. It shows us the small cylinder where the dust specifications can be heated to 1400 ° C. This will help them extract carbon, nitrogen and noble gases.

This is completely unique and is one of the reasons Professor Anand believes that his lab was chosen to obtain rare samples.

James Malelli, a research technician, manages a machine that can understand how much oxygen is contained in the dust specifications.

He shows us a test of what he will do.

“I’m going to hit this grain on the laser tray,” he says, showing the scene enlarged on a computer screen.

“It will start to shine and you will see that it melts inward,” he says.

The team has a year to complete their research. After all, their search for answers will probably eventually destroy the samples.

But China went further than the Chang’e 5 mission.

In 2024, his start Chang’e 6 returned the first samples from the far side of the moon. This is a deeply mysterious place that can have evidence of long volcanic lava streams.

“I very much hope that this is the beginning of long -term cooperation between China and international scientists,” says Prof. Anand.

“Many of us have built our career working on samples returned from Apollo missions, and I think it’s a fantastic tradition that should follow. I hope other countries will follow the example,” he adds.

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