Natural graphene discovered on the Moon

Amazing stuff!

"[China's] Chang’e 5 touched down on the Moon in December 2020, where it scooped up a sample of the lunar regolith and returned it to Earth a few weeks later, marking the first successful lunar retrieval mission since 1976. ...

Now, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Metal Research have made a new discovery in the lunar sample – graphene. ...
but natural graphene has been detected in interstellar space, meteorites, mines and now, on the Moon. ..."

"Carbon is a fundamental element for understanding the formation and evolution of planetary bodies. The origin of the Moon has aroused intensive interest and debate, from which several hypotheses have been proposed. The prevalent giant impact theory has been strongly supported by the notion of a carbon-depleted Moon that derived from the early analysis of Apollo samples. Recently, this consensus has been significantly challenged by the observation of global carbon ion fluxes from the Moon, suggesting the presence of indigenous carbon on the Moon. This observation is consistent with the presence of graphite in the lunar soil. Therefore, it is highly desirable to unravel the crystalline structure of the indigenous carbon phase by conducting further characterization studies on the young lunar samples. ..."

Natural graphene discovered on the Moon

Discovery of natural few-layer graphene on the Moon (open access)

Fig. 1 Structural and compositional characterization of few-layer graphene in the CE-5 lunar soil sample.