Chinese robots have taken over the moon. They've been up there for years now, exploring mysterious regions that were previously unknown, making new discoveries, and most importantly, they've been collecting samples of rock and dust that have been returned to Earth for study. In those samples, the Chinese have found something new. Something that will not only change the way we look at the moon, it could have a massive impact on the future of life on Earth. The thing about the moon is that the more we learn, the more mysterious it becomes. See, the Earth is weird. Not just because it has people living on it, but because it doesn't behave in the same way as the other rocky planets of the inner solar system. And our big gray partner in crime is mostly to blame for this. Venus is the most Earthlike planet in the solar system. It's nearly identical in size and weight. But Venus has no moon. Mars is also pretty Earthlike. It's smaller, about half the size, and Mars actually has two moons, but they're small, like really small. Most people don't realize this, but the largest moon of Mars is only 22 km across. and the smallest one is just 12 km. You could fit both of these inside the city of Chicago. Zooming out to the gas giants, they have big moons, but they're also much bigger planets. Jupiter is 318 times more massive than Earth. And yet, its moons are pretty much the same size as our own. That sounds weird, and it is weird. Scientists are still trying to figure out just what is going on here and how the Earth ended up in such an unusual situation. That is why we study the moon. When NASA sent astronauts to walk on the lunar surface in the 1960s and '7s, they brought back a large amount of rock and dust. And one of the first things scientists noticed was that rocks on the moon have identical characteristics to rocks on Earth. That was unexpected. If the two bodies had formed separately, then they would have ended up being made of different stuff. They'd be like two individuals that met up in space and started orbiting each other. We think that's how most planet moon relationships happen. But if the Earth and the Moon are more like identical twins, then they would have had to form at the same time in the same place. But how could that be? The prevailing theory that came around following the Apollo missions was that the Earth must have been impacted by a rogue planet about the same size as Mars. This would have happened just a couple hundred million years after the formation of the solar system. The exact scenario around this collision has been a subject of debate for many decades. But just a couple of years ago, the theory was fed into a powerful supercomput. It ran millions of simulations until it arrived at an outcome that replicated everything we know about the Earth and the Moon. We call this computer rendering the big splash. The energy released by the impact liquefied the two planets and the force of the collision splashed a big chunk of Earth out into space while the majority of the rogue planet was absorbed into the Earth and sunk down into the core. So, the moon was kind of like a mini Earth that broke off and then evolved right alongside the original planet, cooling and solidifying into rocky landscapes. But for all of their similarities, the moon is obviously a much different place than the Earth. Now, everything that we just said is a leading theory, but it's also just a theory. It's not proven. Although what it does tell us is that the more we discover about the origins of the moon, the more we will know about how our own planet came to be. And for the past 5 years, it's been the Chinese space agency who have been leading the way in lunar research. They have invested massive amounts of time, energy, and money to reach the surface with robotic explorers and seek out answers to these mysteries. We'll begin on the far side of the moon. This is an area that the Chinese have been particularly interested in. They were the first nation to ever reach the far side, and they've even brought back material that is being studied today. Now, in spite of what Pink Floyd or the Transformers might have told you, this is not the dark side of the moon. It sees plenty of sun. It just never sees the Earth, or the Earth never sees it. So in theory, there should be no real difference between the near side and the far side. But that is not the case. Ironically, it's us who are looking at the dark side because the face of the moon that we know so well is created by these low-lying areas of ancient lava. Yeah, the moon had volcanoes. We'll get to that. But on the far side, there are hardly any of those dark spots. It's mostly just light gray and dotted with hundreds of asteroid impact craters. So, we know that there is something different between the side of the moon that faces the Earth and the side that faces away. But what is it? The Chung 4 mission landed on the far side in January 2019. The first spacecraft from Earth to do that and the second Chinese mission to reach the lunar surface. Chung of 4 deployed a rover called U22 that set off on a journey through the vonarman crater. The crater has a width of 180 km which is pretty much equivalent to the length of Cuba. And this particular crater is part of the moon's south pole basin which itself is a gigantic impact crater that's almost as old as the moon dating back nearly 4 billion years and covering a diameter of about 2500 km or just slightly less wide than India. The reason that scientists on Earth are so fascinated by this impact zone is because the giant asteroid that created it would have penetrated as deep as 13 km into the surface of the moon, exposing rock from deep within the lunar crust. And that is where the moon hides its most fascinating secrets. What the U22 rover found in the base of that crater is actually believed to have come from the lunar mantle. That's the thick region of semi-olid rock that separates the outer crust from the inner core. This was the first time that rock from the mantle had been found on the moon. It was never present in any of the samples collected by Apollo astronauts. So that was just enough to peak the curiosity of scientists on Earth and leave them wanting more from the far side. Speaking of curiosity, the U22 rover also saw something very strange on the moon in December 2021. It returned a photograph of something that appeared to be a cube-like structure in the distance, something uniquely unnatural. Could this be the monolith that Stanley Cubri had predicted in 2001, A Space Odyssey? No, it was just a rock. But for a couple of weeks there, they really had us going. What we saw was a trick of light and shadow combined with the fact that digital cameras have square pixels. So, anything rendered at low resolution is going to look like a square until you get close enough to see its real shape. Anyway, the result here was a return to the lunar far side in 2024 with Chungho 6. The lander touched down in the south pole basin just like before, only this time the Chinese would be collecting samples and returning them to Earth. the first ever material from the far side that had ever made its way into human hands. What Chinese scientists found was a very different kind of rock than anything that had been collected on the near side. American Apollo astronauts brought back large amounts of lunar rock and dust from the various locations where they touched down around the equator region. So, we thought that we had a pretty good idea of what the moon was made of. But turns out we were only getting half the story. material from the far side is not only lighter in color than the near side, it also has a much different texture. The first impressions from Chinese scientists found that the dust and rock on the far side is thicker and stickier and contained more lumps than previous moon samples. And while there is less volcanic rock on the far side, the samples of lava that the Chinese did find there have turned out to be much younger than expected. The generally accepted theory is that the far side of the moon cooled down much faster than the side that was facing the Earth because the Earth itself was still incredibly hot and volcanically active in those early years. So what researchers expected to find on the far side would be the oldest volcanic material on the moon. And they did. One fragment of lava found by Chunga 6 dates back 4.2 billion years. The oldest moon rock discovered so far. But they also found a lot of relatively young volcanic rocks on the far side with an average age of 2.8 billion years. That's much younger than a lot of the samples collected by Apollo astronauts, which were typically over 3 billion years. So, the picture that we're starting to reveal is a moon that was hot and molten for a much longer time than previously believed. And that actually goes against a lot of what the big splash theory is trying to tell us. Because if the Earth and the Moon did form at the same time and the moon is so much smaller than the Earth, then it should have cooled down and solidified much faster, especially on the far side. But it doesn't look like that's what actually happened. Which brings us back to the near side. Like we said before, most of what we know comes from Apollo astronauts, but their exploration of the moon was very limited in that they could only land safely on the large flat planes at the equator region, which also tend to be the least interesting places when it comes to science and geology. Even with three Apollo crews having access to a car on the moon, the combined surface area explored by astronauts across all missions only covers about 25 km. That's 1/5 the size of Disney World. If some alien had landed here, walked around the Magic Kingdom for a bit, and then pretended like they knew everything about the Earth, that obviously wouldn't make much sense. And this is another area where the Chinese have been making new discoveries that are quickly rewriting everything we think we know about the moon. The Chung 5 mission was the first sample return from the lunar surface since the mid 1970s. And since this was an uncrrewed landing, the Chinese were able to target a much more geologically interesting feature, the Rumard Dome, a relatively young volcano in the northwest region of the near side. Volcanoes on the moon work a little differently from what you've probably seen on Earth. They don't violently explode up into the sky and leave behind steep, jagged mountains. Instead, a lunar volcano is formed over a thin spot on the surface where lava has been able to escape and slowly leak out over millions of years, creating this extremely wide and flat dome shape. What Chung of 5 managed to find in the area around the Rumer Dome was the youngest rock sample ever returned at around 2 billion years old, which again is helping scientists to understand that the moon has not been a cold dead rock for anywhere near as long as previously believed. China is also helping to redefine what the moon is made out of. One of the first major discoveries from the Chunga sample was a new mineral that was never seen before on the Earth or the moon. They named it Chungaite. And it's not the type of gray rock that you'd expect to find up there. It's a crystal, transparent, and colorless. The only piece of Chungaite that we have is smaller than the width of a human hair, but it's enough to tell us something very important about this new mineral. It contains a very rare element called helium 3. And the reason we want this stuff is because it has the potential to create unlimited clean energy. Helium 3 has long been considered to be the most valuable resource that the moon has to offer. It comes directly from the sun and is deposited on the lunar surface by solar winds. We don't have helium 3 on earth because our magnetic field blocks solar wind from reaching the surface which is one of the most important things that is keeping us alive. Now, the problem with helium 3 is that we would need to have a nuclear fusion reactor in order to release its full energy potential. And that doesn't exist right now. But when it does, we can use this element as a nuclear fuel that will generate massive amounts of energy without any of the dangerous radiation or radioactive waste associated with conventional nuclear power. So, that's important, but only in the long term. What's more relevant right now is that Chung of 5 also found water in the lunar soil. And they found it in the most unlikely place, not in the bottom of a shadowy crater, but on the side of a volcano. So that's a pretty good indicator that there is at least some water to be found pretty much everywhere on the moon. This was also the first time that a complete water molecule had been discovered up there. Before that, we'd found hydrogen and oxygen together, but not in the form of H2O. The water was found inside a new mineral called ULM1, which is a hydrated salt, which means that the water molecules are chemically bonded with the mineral. So, it's kind of like ice and rock all in one thing. And the significance here is that if water on the moon is not scarce, then people can theoretically set up a base pretty much anywhere. We're not as limited to those shadowy craters as we once thought. And this all feeds into another big reason that China is on the moon right now. Figuring out the history is cool, but planning for the future is almost more important. The Chinese are laying a framework for human habitation on the lunar surface. That's what these robots are really doing. NASA got away with just landing people on the moon and hoping for the best because those guys were only up there for a few days at a time. If you're serious about a moon base, then you have to be serious about studying the moon. And right now, it's China who is leading the way.