Moscovium was first created in 2003 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, in collaboration with American laboratories, by fusing americium and calcium nuclei; the discovery was confirmed and the name adopted in 2016. It was named after the Moscow region, the Moscow Oblast, in which Dubna lies. Moscovium is an intensely radioactive synthetic metal, known only from a few atoms. Its isotopes last only fractions of a second and it has no studied chemistry; it decays through a chain of lighter superheavy elements, and it was in tracing that decay chain that its discovery, and those of its neighbours, was finally established.
Moscovium's decay chain passes directly through nihonium, since a moscovium nucleus sheds an alpha particle to become nihonium, which in turn continues decaying further down the table, a genealogical link that meant early moscovium experiments were simultaneously providing some of the first evidence for its neighbour as well. The americium-243 target needed for the synthesis, like the berkelium later used for tennessine, was supplied by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, underscoring how thoroughly the discovery of the periodic table's final elements depended on a handful of specialised reactors capable of brewing such targets at all.