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Updated lunar cratering chronology model with the radiometric age of Chang’e-5 samples

Nature Astronomy volume 6, pages 541–545 (2022)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 11 March 2022

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Abstract

Lunar chronology models are built by associating the radiometric ages of samples returned by the Apollo and Luna missions measured in the laboratory with compiled crater distributions of those sites. Such models have not only been widely used to determine the absolute ages of various regions on the Moon1,2,3,4,5,6, but have also been generalized to date the surfaces of the rocky bodies of the inner Solar System7,8,9,10,11,12. However, there is a gap in lunar samples ages between 3.0 Gyr ago and 1.0 Gyr ago13, which occupies almost half of the history of the Moon. Chang’e-5, the first lunar sample return mission since the Luna 24 lander in 1976, brought back basalt material from a young mare area that has been dated to the centre of this gap at 2.030 ± 0.004 Gyr old14. Using this radiometric age, we updated the most widely used chronology models, focusing in particular on the Neukum model13. We found that the updated model is consistent with a combination of an exponential decrease and a linear rate. The updated chronology gives older ages with respect to the Neukum model for most of the lunar history, with a maximum difference of 0.24 Gyr at 2.55 Gyr ago. Differences from other models are of comparable magnitude or greater. These results have important implications for the chronology and impact history of the inner Solar System.

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Fig. 1: Lunar sampling sites and mapped craters in the Chang’e-5 landing area.
Fig. 2: New lunar chronology model and comparison with the widely used Neukum model.
Fig. 3: Cratering rate and the difference between the new model and the Neukum model.
Fig. 4: Comparison of our lunar chronology model and previous models.

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Data availability

The data points used to fit the new chronology model include those from Neukum13, Hiesinger et al.23, Jia et al.19, Wu et al.22, Qian et al.17 and the radiometric age (2.030 ± 0.004 Ga) from Li et al.14. The mapped craters in the Chang'e-5 landing area can be found at https://zenodo.org/record/5615501#.YXvMT5pByF4.

Code availability

The code for fitting the new lunar cratering chronology function can be found at https://zenodo.org/record/5615459#.YXvHJppByF4.

Change history

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Acknowledgements

The Change'e-5 mission was carried out by the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. This work was supported by the Strategic Priority Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. XDB41000000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos 41941003, 41773065 and 41972321) and the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS (grant no. QYZDY-SSW-DQC028).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Zongyu Yue, Kaichang Di, Wenhui Wan, Zhaoqin Liu, Sheng Gou, Bin Liu, Man Peng, Yexin Wang & Mengna Jia

  2. CAS Center for Excellence in Comparative Planetology, Hefei, China

    Zongyu Yue, Kaichang Di & Jianzhong Liu

  3. Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang, China

    Jianzhong Liu

  4. National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Ziyuan Ouyang

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  1. Zongyu Yue
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Contributions

Z.Y. and K.D. planned the research and prepared the manuscript with the help of Z.O. K.D., W.W., Z.L., S.G., B.L., M.P., Y.W., M.J. and J. L. processed the data.

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Correspondence to Kaichang Di.

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Nature Astronomy thanks Nicolle Zellner, Michelle Kirkhoff and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Yue, Z., Di, K., Wan, W. et al. Updated lunar cratering chronology model with the radiometric age of Chang’e-5 samples. Nat Astron 6, 541–545 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01604-3

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