New Technique Helps Determine Age of Rocks On Moon During Space Missions

Existing techniques to date rocks on Earth are not feasible to be applied in a spacecraft because they require sophisticated sample preparation. Therefore, a team of space engineers led by Dr. F. Scott Anderson from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has come up with a novel technique that paves way for finding the age of rocks on moon or any other planet during a space mission. Called 'Laser Ablation Resonance Ionization Mass Spectrometry', this new technique was tested on an Earth rock which is similar to the rocks find on a large part of the moon and it was able to successfully determine the date. This SwRi developed technique measures the age of rocks right on the mission and therefore eliminates the overhead attached with sending the rock samples to Earth.


This is an important step in the field of space exploration as once scientists are able to determine the age of the cratered terrains on other planets, they can better understand the chronological order of the planetary-scale events from Mercury to Mars. This means that we could know the correct history of planetary evolution, volcanism as well as water and life in our Solar System.

The SwRI engineering team is analyzing planetary samples of increasing complexity. They have also sent a proposal to NASA to launch a mission called 'MARE: Moon Age and Regolith Explorer' to put their research work to practical use.

In summer 2013, SwRI had published a report where they wrote how the team was working with development partners to miniaturize the instrument to a 1 cubicfoot box.

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