Chandrayaan-3: Indian mission discovers further traces of a "magma ocean"
Scientists find more evidence that the southern hemisphere of the moon was covered by an ocean of molten rock billions of years ago.
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According to scientists, the southern hemisphere of the moon was once covered by an ocean of liquid, molten rock. At least that is what some scientists believe according to a theory ("Lunar Magma Ocean") about the formation of the moon. According to this theory, the surface of the moon was gradually formed around 4.5 billion years ago by the crystallization of an ocean of magma.
Researchers claim to have discovered the remains of this "magma ocean" in the course of India's Chandrayaan-3 mission. This is the result of a study recently published in Nature. Around a year ago, the lunar lander Vikram landed at the South Pole. During the ten-day mission, the Pragyaan rover used an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer to collect data that provided information about the mineral composition of the lunar soil.
The chemical composition of the lunar rock has already been determined with the help of previous lunar missions such as Apollo, Luna and Chang'e. According to the researchers, 23 measurements near the landing site of Chandrayaan-3 show that the local lunar terrain in this region is fairly uniform and consists mainly of anorthosite (ferroan anorthosite, FAN). "The measurements show that the lunar terrain at this location is very uniform and consists mainly of ferrous anorthosite," the researchers said.
Although NASA's Apollo mission had brought similar rock samples from mid-latitudes of the moon to Earth, the Chandrayaan-3 mission has now provided direct evidence from the "south pole of the moon" for the first time. The Indian Space Research Organization is already planning the next mission, Chandrayaan-4, which will bring soil samples to Earth.
(mack)