India’s lunar rover may have found evidence of the first lunar earthquake since the 1970s.
The Lunar Seismic Activity Observing System (ILSA) installed on the Vikram lander detected seismic activity on the lunar surface. Month August 26th. Vikram landed at the moon’s south pole on August 23 as part of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, India’s first lunar exploration.
If confirmed, the mission’s detection of lunarquakes alongside other activities, such as the movement of India’s Praya spacecraft, could provide valuable insight into the mysterious churning interior of our Earth’s fellow Moon. This could provide scientists with great insights.
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The lander “recorded an event believed to be a natural phenomenon on August 26, 2023,” the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said in a statement. I wrote to X, was twitter before. “The origin of this event is under investigation.”
The 1969-1977 Apollo Lunar Exploration Program was the first to detect seismic activity on the Moon, suggesting that the Moon is not uniformly rocky like the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos, but rather has deep and complex geological formations. It has been proven that there is a hidden geological structure.
In recent years, thanks to advanced analytical tools and computer models, scientists have been able to scrutinize data collected by Apollo and other missions to build a clearer picture of the moon’s mysterious interior. .a 2011 NASA study They found that the lunar core, much like the core of Earth, is likely composed of liquid iron surrounding a dense solid iron ball.
In May 2023, the researchers said, Use gravitational field data While supporting this iron core hypothesis, they also suggested that chunks of the moon’s molten mantle could separate from the rest and rise to the surface as chunks of iron, generating earthquakes as they move.
But these discoveries are just the beginning of the moon’s secrets. The magnetic field is generated within the planetary body by the stirring motion of material within the planet’s electrically conductive molten core.
Inside today’s non-magnetic materials Month It is completely different from the magnetized interior of the Earth. It is dense and largely frozen, with only a small outer core region melted by fluid. Scientists believe that the moon’s interior cooled fairly quickly and uniformly after it formed about 4.5 billion years ago, meaning that the moon does not have a strong magnetic field. Many scientists believe that the moon never existed.
So why do some of the 3-billion-year-old rocks recovered during NASA’s Apollo program appear to have formed in a geomagnetic field as strong as Earth’s?
These are the questions that Chandrayaan 3 can answer. The mission’s lander and rover are both solar-powered, so they are currently in sleep mode until the moon completes about 14 nights. When the sun hits the surface of the moon’s south pole again on September 22, both tools will be ready to look for answers.