Recently, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft successfully landed on the Moon’s surface, making India the fourth country on Earth to successfully land on the Moon and the first to land near the south pole.
Since then, the mission, which was primarily aimed at studying the composition of the lunar soil, has detected sulfur, aluminum, calcium, iron, chromium, titanium, manganese, silicon and oxygen. He also broke new ground on the Moon by measuring the temperature at the Moon’s south pole.
The rover also detected some seismic activity using an instrument designed to measure tremors and earthquakes beneath the moon’s surface, and the rover used a spectroscope to confirm the presence of sulfur near the moon’s south pole. According to ISRO, scientists will now aim to investigate how the element got there and whether it existed naturally on the surface or was the result of a meteor impact or volcanic activity.
While the rover analyzes the composition of the soil, it monitors ground movements such as natural moonquakes, thanks to the Lunar Seismic Activity Instrument (ILSA). On August 26, 2023, it was announced that an “apparently natural” ground motion had been detected, which they are currently investigating.
Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
In-situ Scientific ExperimentsRadio Anatomy of Moon Bound Hypersensitive Ionosphere and Atmosphere – Langmuir Probe (RAMBHA-LP) payload onboard Chandrayaan-3 Lander has made first-ever measurements of the near-surface Lunar plasma environment over the… pic.twitter.com/n8ifIEr83h
— ISRO (@isro) August 31, 2023
It is thought that moonquakes are not caused by the movements of tectonic plates, as on Earth. Instead, Earth’s gravity is thought to cause solid tidal stresses on the Moon, cracking it and causing pieces to rub against each other. We hope the Vikram spacecraft will give us more information about these earthquakes and how they affect the Moon.
On the other hand, in an experiment, the temperature of the moon’s topsoil was measured at various depths and ISRO scientist BHM Darukesha said that the surface was warmer than expected. “We all believed that the temperature on the surface might be around 20 degrees Celsius to 30 degrees Celsius (68 to 86 Fahrenheit), but the temperature is 70 degrees Celsius (158 Fahrenheit). This is surprisingly higher than we expected,” he said.