A year ago, India sent a probe to the moon. Today, we are solving decades-old mysteries.

It was exactly a year ago that India made space history by successfully landing the Chandrayaan-3 Vikram lander near the moon’s south pole, becoming the fourth country to do so. The Pragyan spacecraft then set out to explore the landing site, an area that gave scientists insight into the moon’s geology that had yet to be sampled. Now it has been confirmed that One of the most famous theories.

Discovery. The rover made 23 measurements as it orbited across a 103-meter-wide area of ​​the lunar surface, located 50 meters from the Chandrayaan-3 landing site, over a period of 10 days. The rover’s data represent the first measurements of elements within lunar soil near the south polar region.

Not only that. Apparently, we now know that Pragyan’s measurements found that the particular mix of chemical elements in the lunar soil (or regolith) surrounding the lander was relatively uniform. This regolith consisted primarily of a type of white rock called iron anorthosite. As we will see below, this finding seems to confirm the idea that One ocean of magma covered the moon. At the beginning of its history.

A decades old theory. The sample found from this type of soft rock was very similar to samples taken from the equatorial region of the moon during the Apollo 16 mission in 1972. For this reason, the researchers focused on subsequent analyses that led to A study published in the journal Nature.

More importantly, the samples help solve remaining mysteries about how the Moon evolved over time, including how it formed during the chaotic early days of the solar system. In other words, the presence of similar rocks on different parts of the Moon seems to confirm a decades-old hypothesis that the Moon was once covered by an ancient magma ocean. The authors said From the study.

Theories. Although there are many hypotheses about how the Moon formed, experts (mostly) agree that about 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized body or series of bodies collided with Earth, sending enough molten debris into the sky to form the Moon. The first lunar samples collected during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 led to the theory that the Moon was once a ball of molten magma.

The nearly 400 kilograms of lunar rock and soil brought back to Earth by the Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s disproved the idea that the Moon was a celestial body trapped by Earth’s gravity, or that the Moon formed with Earth from the same debris. The rock samples showed that the Moon was created about 60 million years after the solar system began to form, According to NASA.

Magma ocean. After this timeline, the magma ocean continued. for about 100 million yearsPerhaps hundreds to thousands of kilometers, as it cooled, crystals formed inside. At this point, rocks and minerals such as the newly discovered iron anorthosite are thought to have risen to the surface to form the lunar crust and highlands, while other denser, magnesium-rich minerals such as olivine sank deep below the surface into the mantle.

As they point out in their work, it is important to be clear that one thing is the lunar crust, which has an average thickness of about 50 kilometers, and the other is the lunar mantle underneath it, which can be more than 1,300 kilometers deep.

Pragyan confirms this. Here we return to the Indian rover. When Pragyan investigated the chemical composition of the lunar soil, he found a mixture of iron anorthosite and other rocks, including minerals such as olivine. The Chandrayaan-3 landing site, called Shiv Shakti Point, was about 350 kilometers from the edge of the moon. Aitken Basin in AntarcticaIt is considered the oldest crater on the surface of the moon.

The team believes an asteroid impact created the basin “about 4.2 billion years ago and exposed magnesium-rich minerals such as olivine, mixing them with lunar soil.” Lead author Santosh Vadavalli explained,In fact, the next step will be to further investigate the presence of these minerals that may have originated in the lunar mantle, which would obviously allow us to understand and decipher the origins and evolution of the satellite.

Image | NASA, APXSPOC, PRL

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