New findings from Apollo moon rocks

Lunar rocks collected by Apollo astronauts more than half a century ago are providing a fresh take on the moon’s mysterious magnetic field, scientists have reported.

- BY MARCIA DUNN

Samples to be retrieved by future moonwalkers in NASA's new Artemis program should yield even more clues.

Four Artemis astronauts are expected to fly around the moon in a crucial test flight, blasting off as early as April from Kennedy Space Center after weeks of delays.

The study by University of Oxford researchers in England released last month suggests that although the moon’s magnetic field has been weak during most of its existence, it strengthened and even exceeded Earth’s magnetic activity during extremely brief periods 3 billion to 4 billion years ago. Their findings appear in the journal Nature Geoscience.