Independent

India's moon rover confirms sulfur and detects several other elements near the lunar south pole

Ahead of the first anniversary of its successful landing on the south pole of the Moon, India's Chandrayaan-3 mission has uncovered evidence that a vast magma ocean may have once existed under the lunar surface.

The Times of India

According to a study published in Nature on Wednesday, Chandrayaan-3's Pragyan rover analyzed the moon's high-latitude region and collected the first regolith samples from 23 locations using an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer.

The Wire

Cosmos

The outermost layer of lunar soil had traces of ferroan anorthosite, bolstering the lunar magma ocean hypothesis, which posits that when the moon formed 4.5B years ago, heavier minerals sank inward to form its mantle while lighter rocks floated to the surface, creating the outer crust.

BBC News

Interestingly, the lunar soil samples collected by the Pragyan rover matched those fetched by astronauts on NASA's Apollo and the Soviet Union's Luna missions to the moon's equatorial and mid-latitude regions in the 1970s.

USA Today

wapo

The researchers also discovered olivine, aluminum, magnesium, potassium, iron, titanium, chromium, and manganese, which are typically found at a depth of nearly 100 kilometers (62 miles). They suggest these materials came from a 2.5K-kilometer (1553 miles) wide crater in the moon's south pole.

ThePrint

ABC News

The orbital data shows the chemical and elemental composition of the regolith collected from the moon's rocky surface is fairly uniform over 103 meters where the rover operated during its nine-day mission on Aug. 23, 2003.

Nature

The Conversation

This discovery is a game-changer for spacefaring nations' dreams of building a human base on the moon. If ice water is discovered on the moon's south pole, it will facilitate prebiotic chemistry that can produce and feed life and make deep-space expeditions to places like Mars possible.

India’s lunar lander finds signs a vast magma ocean may have once existed on the moon

India’s pioneering mission bolsters idea that Moon’s surface was molten

This research is debatable because the Pragyan rover found more olivine than pyroxene on the lunar surface, contradicting the findings of previous missions. Moreover, the moon lacks plate tectonics; even if there's liquid water, it may lack the organic chemistry necessary to support life.

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Popular Science

The moon was once covered in an ocean of magma: new data supports theory

There's a 50% chance that NASA will next land astronauts on the moon by 2029, according to the Metaculus prediction community.

India's Lunar Mission Finds Remnants of Magma Ocean on Moon

The Spin

Metaculus Prediction

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India's Lunar Mission Finds Remnants of Magma Ocean on Moon

The Spin

Metaculus Prediction

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