On China’s 11th National Space Day, marked on April 24 2026, the China National Space Administration announced a groundbreaking scientific breakthrough at a celebratory event in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Chinese researchers have confirmed the discovery of two previously unknown minerals from lunar soil and rock samples retrieved by the country’s Chang’e 5 mission more than five years ago, marking a major milestone in humanity’s exploration of the moon.
Both new minerals, officially named magnesiochangesite-(Y) and changesite-(Ce), have received formal approval from the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification of the International Mineralogical Association, the global authoritative body for mineral classification and registration. This discovery brings the total number of new lunar minerals identified by Chinese scientists to three, following the first Chinese-discovered lunar mineral, changesite-(Y), which was documented in 2022. Globally, these two new entries are the seventh and eighth lunar minerals ever confirmed from samples physically brought back to Earth from the moon.
Magnesiochangesite-(Y) was isolated and characterized by a research team headed by Li Ziying, a senior geoscientist at the Beijing Research Institute of Uranium Geology of the China National Nuclear Corp. The tiny mineral grain was found embedded within basalt clasts from Chang’e 5’s drill-collected lunar samples, with particle sizes ranging between just 2 and 30 micrometers — small enough to be invisible to the naked human eye.
The second new mineral, changesite-(Ce), was discovered by a team led by Hou Zengqian, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. Notably, researchers have identified this mineral not only in the Chang’e 5 collected samples, but also in a lunar meteorite that naturally fell within China’s national territory. Changesite-(Ce) forms along the margins of other lunar crystals including anorthite, ferrosilite, fluorapatite and ilmenite, with grain sizes measuring approximately 3 to 15 micrometers.
Per the China National Space Administration’s official statement, both newly identified minerals are rare earth phosphate minerals trapped within the fine particulate fraction of lunar soil. Both possess delicate, unique crystalline structures that have no matching analog among naturally occurring minerals found on Earth. Along with the previously discovered changesite-(Y), the two new minerals belong to the merrillite group — a category of phosphate minerals commonly detected in extraterrestrial samples from the moon, Mars and asteroids, but one that displays wide compositional variation and uneven distribution across different planetary bodies.
The Chang’e 5 robotic mission, launched in late 2020, stands as one of the most significant deep-space exploration endeavors of the 21st century. The 23-day mission successfully returned 1,731 grams of lunar rock and soil to Earth, marking the first time any nation had collected fresh lunar samples in 44 years, following the Soviet Union’s final lunar sample return mission in 1976. With this achievement, China became the third country in history to successfully retrieve geological materials from the moon, after the United States and the former Soviet Union.
Li Ziying, the lead researcher for the magnesiochangesite-(Y) discovery, noted that the Chang’e 5 landing site differs significantly from the sites visited by U.S. Apollo missions and Soviet Luna missions, with a much younger geological formation timeline. This difference means the Chang’e 5 samples hold unique chemical and geological characteristics not seen in previously collected lunar materials.
“The discovery of magnesiochangesite-(Y) expands the global catalog of confirmed lunar minerals, and offers a new mineralogical reference point for research into the moon’s formation and evolutionary history, ancient lunar magmatic activity, and lunar chemical differentiation processes,” Li explained.
Officials from the China National Space Administration emphasized that the new discoveries will provide critical empirical evidence for advancing deep research into the moon’s bulk material composition, long-term geological evolution, and early origins. These findings represent a landmark achievement in integrating large-scale deep-space exploration infrastructure with cutting-edge basic scientific research, and carry major significance for advancing humanity’s collective understanding of the moon and the broader solar system.