How India’s rover made historic discovery that could help our understanding of the moon's past
It was India's first successful moon landing
India made history in August 2023 when its Chandrayaan-3 Vikram mission successfully landed on the Moon's south pole, a first for any spacecraft.
Since then, the groundbreaking mission has been helping scientists uncover lunar secrets.
The Chandrayaan-3 Vikram lander carried with it a rover called Pragyan, which means 'wisdom' in Sanskrit.
Pragyan is at the heart of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)'s mission on the moon.
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Using an instrument called the Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), which was created by the Laboratory for Electro-Optics Systems in Bangalore, the lunar rover was to test and showcase new technologies needed for future interplanetary missions.
Essentially, Pragyan uses its laser to fire pulses at noteworthy samples, vaporising them to create plasma.
And then, by analysing the light emitted from this plasma, the rover can analyse its wavelengths to determine what elements are present.
The rover was engineered to withstand extreme temperature shifts from 70°C to -10°C to adapt to the volatile lunar atmosphere.
Within its first week, Pragyan showed value by detecting traces of sulphur in the Moon’s south pole soil. The rover also discovered other elements like aluminium, iron, calcium, titanium, chromium, oxygen and silicon.
Remarkably, the ISRO confirmed the discovery as the 'first-ever in-situ (on-site) measurement of the elemental composition of the surface near the lunar south pole.' They also pointed out that such progression was 'not feasible by the instruments onboard the orbiters.'
It's more than just an ambitious project as Sara Russell, a professor of planetary sciences at the Natural History Museum in London, explained its potential for future lunar exploration.
"Sulphur is usually bonded to important metals like iron and nickel, and these may be important ores that could be used by future astronauts to enable them to live and work on the moon," she told the MailOnline.
"We already know that the moon contains sulphur, from our analyses of rocks returned from the moon by space missions, and from lunar meteorites."
Russell continued: "What we don't really know is the distribution and abundance of sulphur on the moon. This has really important implications for understanding the way the moon evolved."
Furthermore, the Chandrayaan-3 mission has also supported something called 'lunar magma ocean' theory, suggesting that the Moon was once covered by an ocean of molten rock.
The results add further evidence to the theory, published in Nature, that the molten formed the Moon’s crust, mantle and core billions of years ago.