India's Chandrayaan-3 sends home lunar bonanza with magma theory evidence

Over a billion souls triumphed with joy when the Vikram lander of India's Chandrayaan-3 mission touched down on the lunar surface on August 23, 2023. Hours later, the Pragyan rover rolled out to the lunar surface. A long night began for Pragyan on Moon's subzero temperatures 14 days later.

But before sleeping forever, India's beloved Pragyan, among others, turned a lunar hypothesis into a defining truth.

Pragyan found anorthosite rocks on the moon, which scientists believed were the site of an ancient ocean of magma that covered the lunar surface some four billion years ago. Pragyan has confirmed with ground evidence that this indeed was the case.

This is the most significant finding by the Chandrayaan-3 thus far, the one that sheds light on the Moon's origins.

"It gives more support to the lunar magma ocean hypothesis," Mahesh Anand, a planetary scientist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK told Nature where these findings were published.

The moon was born from the remains of a headlong collision between the early Earth and some rogue planetary body billions of years ago. The rocky surface of the Moon was initially molten.

Also watch |All about Chandrayaan-3 mission

The minerals in there slowly crystallised as the lava cooled down to form rocks of various kinds, including ferroan anorthosite.

Over several millennia, the meteorites raining down the Moon beat down these rocks to fine dust. Similar phenomena also occur on the Earth but the Moon's thin atmosphere and lack of volcanic activity expedite this weathering process.

"It’s sort of what we expected to be there based on orbital data, but the ground truth is always really good to get," Lindy Elkins-Tanton, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe, told Nature.

"To me, it’s a story about the success of the Indian space programme," Elkins-Tanton said.

(With inputs from agencies)