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It’s the first lunar sample that’s been recovered since the ’70s. One interesting thing is that it comes from a relatively "young" region. Most of the Moon’s surface is shaped by ancient volcanic activity and meteorite impacts. But the region where these Chinese samples have been taken is less than 2 billion years old, ie flooded by lava much later than the Apollo sites.
Apparently this was worked out by counting the craters and applying a bit of statistics. Fascinating. But the returned samples have confirmed it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g3krykxypo
In the BBC article the contents of the little vial are described as "more precious than gold dust" which when you consider the expense of getting hold of it and its value to science, seems a ridiculous understatement.
The Chinese mission collected 1.7kg of the stuff. We now have 60mg of it in a safe in Milton Keynes. A bit of googling tells me that 60mg of gold dust would cost about 10p.
The return of the samples was the primary goal of China’s Chang’e 5 mission, which probably cost about $1.2 billion. They got 1.73kg so on that basis, each 60mg of the stuff was acquired at a cost of about $42,000.
