Synopsis
The landing site of ISRO's Chandrayaan-3, located near the Moon's south pole, is approximately 3.7 billion years old. This historic mission marks India's entry as the fourth country to achieve a soft lunar landing.Key Takeaways
- Chandrayaan-3 landed near the Moon's south pole.
- The region is about 3.7 billion years old.
- India is now the fourth nation to land on the Moon.
- The site features diverse terrain types.
- Geological studies provide insights into the Moon's history.
New Delhi, Feb 8 (NationPress) The landing location of the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-3, positioned close to the Moon's south pole in 2023, is estimated to be around 3.7 billion years old, according to scientists.
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which carries the lunar lander Vikram and the Pragyan rover, successfully made history by being the first to land in this region of the Moon on August 23, 2023.
With this achievement, India has joined the ranks as the fourth nation—following the former USSR (now Russia), the USA, and China—to accomplish a soft landing on the Moon.
Employing high-resolution remote sensing data, a group of scientists, including those from ISRO in Bengaluru and the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, conducted a mapping of the landing site of Chandrayaan-3.
The geological mapping unveiled the spatial arrangement of three distinct terrain types within the landing zone, which includes high-relief rugged terrain, smooth plains, and low-relief smooth plains, as stated by the team in their paper published in the Science Direct journal.
The researchers concluded that this region is approximately 3.7 billion years old. This timeframe corresponds to the period when the earliest microscopic life forms began to appear on Earth, according to scientists in an article published in Nature.
The landing site of Chandrayaan-3 is located within the low-relief smooth plains. The geological map of this site offers new perspectives on the Moon’s history, indicating that debris from the nearby Schomberger crater blankets the area.
Further analysis showed that the landscape is dotted with boulders, some exceeding five meters in diameter. “The majority of these boulders originate from a new, 540-meter crater located 14 kilometers south of the landing site,” the scientists noted.
On the western side, smaller, centimeter-sized rock fragments likely originated from a nearby 10-meter-wide crater, according to the team.
These findings provide essential context for interpreting the data from the Chandrayaan-3 mission and enhance our comprehension of the geological history of the Moon’s southern high-latitude area.
