CHINESE scientists have discovered two new lunar minerals from the lunar samples brought back by China’s Chang’e-5 mission.

This marks the latest achievement following their first discovery of a lunar mineral, changesite-(Y), in 2022. To date, the total number of new minerals discovered from Moon samples worldwide has reached eight.

The China National Space Administration announced the two findings: magnesiochangesite-(Y) and changesite-(Ce), both of which have been approved by the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (CNMNC) of the International Mineralogical Association.

Li Ziying, chief scientist at the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) and leader of the team that discovered magnesiochangesite-(Y), explained that this new mineral was found in the basaltic debris from the drilled samples brought back by the Chang’e-5 mission in 2020.

It is a calcium rare earth phosphate mineral belonging to the same group as changesite-(Y), yet possesses unique identifying features: extremely small in size, appearing as short columnar crystals with grain diameters of only 2 to 30 micrometers — approximately one thirtieth to one third the width of a human hair — invisible to the naked eye, with a distinctive structure, according to Li.

Hou Zengqian, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the State Key Laboratory of Deep Earth and Mineral Exploration at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences (CAGS), said that changesite-(Ce) is a new mineral species belonging to the merrillite group, characterized as rich in the light rare earth element (REE): cerium (Ce).

Compared to the merrillite-group minerals found in Earth, Mars, and asteroid samples, changesite-type minerals exhibit distinct REE enrichment characteristics. It is precisely this difference that enables scientists to distinguish lunar samples from materials originating from other celestial bodies, making it a kind of “fingerprint mineral.”(Xinhua)