An analysis of lunar soil in the southern high-latitude regions of the Moonmade with data from the Indian mission Chandrayaan-3has found remnants of what could be an ancient magma oceanaccording to an article published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Until now, research on the geology of the Moon has been based primarily on samples taken by missions to mid-lunar latitudes, such as those of the Apollo program. POT.
However, on August 23, 2023, after a complex and smooth maneuver, Vikram, the lander of the Indian Chandrayaan-3 mission, successfully landed on the lunar south polethe southernmost face of the satellite and a region that had never been explored before.
The landing was a relief for India, which saw the failure of its predecessor mission, Chandrayaan-2, in 2019, which had the same objective and which failed precisely during the deceleration maneuver to touch down on the lunar surface.
But the Chandrayaan-3 made history by making India the first country to reach the southernmost part of the natural satellitewhere for fourteen days it collected information on the presence of water and minerals on the satellite.
To do this, The Pragyan rover made 23 measurements at various points across 103 meters of the lunar surface using its alpha particle X-ray spectrometer.which measured the elemental composition of lunar regolith.
Now, Santosh Vadawale of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, India, and his colleagues present the results of those measurements in a scientific paper published in Nature.
Analysis of lunar regolith
Pragyan’s explorations revealed a relatively uniform elemental composition in the lunar regolith surrounding the lander, which contained primarily the ferrous anorthosite rock type.
These lunar south pole composition measurements are intermediate between those of samples from the equatorial region of the Moon taken by the missions Apollo 16 and Luna-20the study details.
For the authors, the similar chemical composition of these geographically distant samples supports the hypothesis of the existence of a lunar magma ocean.
According to his hypothesis, As the Moon cooled during its formation, the less dense ferrous anorthosite floated to the lunar surface.while heavier minerals sank to form the mantle.
Vadawale and his team believe that the magnesium minerals that were also detected by Pragyan, and which cannot be explained by the lunar magma ocean hypothesis, are probably Deepest material excavated in the Aitken Basin, one of the largest impact scars in the Solar System.
The study concludes that the composition of the Vikram landing site is consistent with the lunar magma ocean hypothesis, which predicts that the lunar highlands formed as a result of the flotation of lighter anorthositic rocks.