A research team has reported finding the presence of a rock type called ferroan anorthosite in the lunar soil. The sighting is important because it confirms what the U.S. Apollo missions and the erstwhile Soviet Union’s Luna missions saw from the lunar equator in the 1960s.
Lunar Magma Ocean theory
- The consensus among scientists is that these anorthosite rocks could be the remains of an ancient ocean of magma that blanketed the moon’s surface some four billion years ago.
- Remnants of the ocean were found by India’s historic Chandrayaan-3 mission that landed on the south pole on 23rd August 2023.
- Ferroan anorthosite: Ferroan anorthosite rocks are very common on the earth. The findings help back up an idea called the Lunar Magma Ocean theory about how the Moon formed.
- As per the consensus, the moon was born from the remains of a headlong collision between the early earth and some rogue planetary body aeons ago. The moon’s rocky surface was initially molten. The minerals in there slowly crystallised as the lava cooled to form rocks of various kinds, including ferroan anorthosite.
- The Vikram lander onboard the Chandrayaan-3 mission landed on the moon just past 6 pm IST on August 23, 2023.
- Statio Shiv Shakti: The Pragyan rover rolled out a few hours later and gingerly moved about 100 metres from Vikram over the next two weeks. Vikram’s landing spot, Statio Shiv Shakti, is about 300 km from the largest impact crater in the solar system: the South Pole-Aitken Basin.
- During its journey, the rover occasionally stopped to observe moon dust with its instruments — from some 23 locations around Statio Shiv Shakti.
- Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS): Its Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument, mounted close to the rover’s navigation cameras, affirmed the dust’s chemical and mineral composition by firing X-rays and alpha particles at it produced from a radioactive mass of curium.
