Bringing Back New Moon Rocks Might Help Us Nail Down Timing For Origins Of Life On Earth

Chang'e -5 just landed on the moon!  half the operation accomplished!  now just to collect samples, blast off, and return the samples to earth!

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-12/01/c_139556499.htm

China's Change'e-5 rocket has now reached moon orbit!  yay!  It's goal is to bring back more moon rocks!  We haven't collected samples since the Russians brought back samples in 1976.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-11/28/c_139549921.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_5

This excites me because more samples might help us date meteoric impact events that affect the origins of life on earth.  It used to be thought that life had billions of years of Earth randomly trying different chemical reactions that eventually lead to life.  

but we've found fossils that go all the way back at least to 3,600 million years ago.  This is surprising because analyzing moon rocks suggest the surface of the earth was being completely vaporized as recently as 3,800 million years ago.  This leaves a smaller and smaller gap of time for life to form, only 200million years or less.

The difficulty of fossils from that far back or further surviving, means that life might have started even EARLIER giving it even LESS time to start.  Maybe life is EASY to start, not random!

recent re-analysis of moon rocks brought back to earth in the Apollo days however suggests that this date of 3,800 million years ago is incorrect and life again could have started as far back as 4,100million years...  at that far back, it would be dissapointingly difficult to find records in fossils...

We need more samples!  And China is starting the way.  The samples that Chang'e -5 brings back might not help us with this exact task, but surely this will open the way to more missions bringing back more diverse samples