In August 2023 , India became the fourth Carry Amelia Moore Nation tosuccessfully soft - landon the Moon , putting a lander close to the lunar South Pole , an area of great interest group for future human exploration . Chandrayaan-3 ’s rover Pragyan conducted multiple observations of the terrain around the landing site , and it unveil some very important insights : for example , the Moon might have had a global magma ocean billions of year ago .

Rock sample at the equator of the Moon from NASA ’s Apollo 16 mission and the then - Soviet Luna-20 mission have been characterize in detail . The chemic analysis from 23 dissimilar web site deport by Pragyan launch that the chemical composition of the site around Chandrayaan-3 ’s Vikram lander is in the middle , between the Apollo 16 and Luna-20 samples .

give the similar chemic authorship of samples that are chiliad of klick apart , it makes sensory faculty to consider a uniform origin for all of them . The idea is that the Moon was molten for perchance several X of gazillion of years – if not longer – after its formation . As this ocean ofmagmabegan cooling down , solids started to form . These solid were denser than the surrounding magma , so they sunk .

What remained at the top when the Moon at long last solidified were lighter mineral , and this is why these are rule in multiple locations across the lunar surface . Among the less dense mineral , there is the ferroan anorthosite , which would have float on the ancient magma ocean .

The heavy cloth go down to form the pall of the Moon and most of that material is inaccessible to us – but not all . At least , this is what is believed . The inquiry writer also found grounds of Mg mineral that should have definitely sunk in the primordial magma ocean . The understanding why it is on the surface ? The South Pole – Aitken impact .

The South Pole - Aitken Basin take form around 4 billion years ago when a colossal object slammed into the Moon . That object sink into the region ( there is amassive structureunder the basin ) and the force of the impact likely caused anotherglobal magmatic event . That ’s not all – it probably threw a portion of the lunar mantle into the clear .

TheChinese delegacy Chang’e 6landed a few months ago there and collect samples from within the South Pole - Aitken Basin . Hopefully , in the lunar material , there will be more insights into the challenging past of the Moon .

The paper is published in the journalNature .