Rice University professor Bidong Zhang has received a grant to develop next-generation lunar radiometric dating techniques that will acquire more accurate ages for lunar samples. This project is supported by $2.54 million over a three-year funding period from the NASA Laboratory Analysis of Returned Samples program.
“Lunar chronology is essential for understanding the Moon, its cosmological origin and history,” Zhang said. “This grant will allow us to develop next-generation radiometric dating techniques to acquire accurate, precise ages for lunar rocks and from that provide insight into how our closest celestial neighbor formed and evolved.”
While several methods for lunar radiometric dating exist, they are often destructive, labor-intensive, difficult to accurately acquire ages or are not adaptable to all lunar rock types. Zhang and his team will focus on developing an easier-to-use, minimally destructive tool kit that is useful for a broad range of sample types brought back to Earth by NASA’s future lunar missions.
“This grant will support a few key goals of the Artemis Program, which aims to bring new lunar samples from the far side of the Moon,” Zhang said. “The new radiometric dating techniques will be useful for both earth- and planetary-focused chemistry research.”
Rice has a long history of space research, including NASA collaborations dating back to the founding of the government agency in 1958. The university has maintained a leadership role in advancing space science and technology ever since, through initiatives such as the Rice Space Institute, a robust physics and astronomy research program and deep, rich partnerships across the space community.