Meteorite dates lunar volcanoes

Volcanoes were active on the Moon's surface soon after it was formed, a new study in the journal Nature suggests. Precision dating of a lunar rock that fell to Earth shows our satellite must have had lava erupting across its vast plains 4.35 billion years ago. This is hundreds of millions of years earlier than had been indicated by the rocks collected by Apollo astronauts. Scientists say the information will help us better understand the beginnings of the Solar System. And they urge future Moon missions to try to obtain more of these most ancient rocks. "We want to understand how the Solar System formed, how the planets formed," said Mahesh Anand from the UK's Open University. "The Moon is the only place where you can go to find the first 500 million years of geological history, because these old rocks have been lost on Earth," he told BBC News. Botswana fortune: According to the favoured theory, the Moon was created some 4.5 billion years ago in a smash-up between the Earth and a Mars-sized body. Material thrown into space is believed to have coalesced to become our satellite. Kalahari 009 is the biggest of all the known lunar meteorites Volcanism on this new object would not have started until its surface had cooled to form a crust and its insides had become separated into a mantle and a core. Quite when this might have happened has been hard to pin down. Virtually none of the basaltic rocks collected by moonwalkers are older than 3.

9 billion years; but with less than 400kg of lunar material returned to Earth, many scientists suspected Apollo would not be the last word on the subject. Now, Dr Anand - working with Dr Kentaro Terada, from Hiroshima University, Japan, and other colleagues - has put a new date on a lunar meteorite known as Kalahari 009. Sometime in the past, this 13.5kg volcanic rock was blasted off the Moon by the impact of an asteroid or comet and fell to Earth in what is now Botswana.