A tiny sample of the Moon locked away for more than 50 years turns out to have been hiding an astronomical secret.

In specks of troilite dust collected by Apollo 17 in 1972 , scientists have found material that may be as old – or even older – than the Moon itself, a 4.5-billion-year-old relic of the early Solar System.

"My first thought was, 'Holy shmolies, that can't be right,'" says planetary scientist James Dottin of Brown University in the US.

"So we went back to make sure we had done everything properly, and we had. These are just very surprising results."

Related: Curiosity Cracked Open a Rock on Mars And Discovered a Huge Surprise

During the 1960s and early 1970s, NASA's Apollo astronauts brought home to Earth a total of 382 kilograms (842 pounds) of lunar material f

See Full Page