MOSCOW, Apr 24 Russia handed over one and a half grams of lunar soil delivered by a Soviet station more than 50 years ago to China in response to samples received from China in 2022, said on Monday Space Research Institute (IKI) RAS.
Earlier, Guan Feng, director of the Center for Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said that China in 2022, during a visit to Beijing by Russian President Vladimir Putin, gave Russia 1.5 grams of lunar soil delivered by the Chang'e-5 probe. in 2020.
«In 2022-2023, within the framework of cooperation in the field of space research, Russia and China mutually transferred each other 1 .5 grams of lunar soil samples,» the report said.
It is noted that samples collected by the Luna-16 landing mission were handed over to China. She landed on September 20, 1970 in the Sea of Plenty on the visible side of the Moon. Back she managed to return 101 grams of soil. It was the world's first automatic delivery to Earth of samples of matter from another celestial body. Thanks to the analysis of these samples at the time, scientists were able to determine the age of the moon (4.5 billion years).
It is clarified that for the analysis of samples received from China, a working group has been created at the Russian Academy of Sciences, consisting of representatives of the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry and IKI. The researchers are going to pay special attention to the presence of inclusions of volatile substances in soil samples. In the future, we plan to discuss the results with our Chinese colleagues.