In August 2023, India became the fourth country to successfully soft-land on the Moon, deploying a lander near the lunar South Pole, a location of considerable interest for future human exploration. Chandrayaan-3’s rover Pragyan made numerous studies of the landscape surrounding the landing site, revealing some essential facts, such as the possibility of an ancient magma Ocean at the Moon’s South Pole.

India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission discovered evidence of an ancient magma Ocean at the Moon’s South Pole, a previously unknown region. The Pragyan rover, deployed by the Vikram lander in August 2023, made this discovery. These findings confirm the theory that the early Moon began to cool and crystallise some 4.5 billion years ago, forming a lighter mineral known as ferroan anorthosite. This material, a molten rock, became the Moon’s crust.

Pragyan covered 103 meters during its nine-day voyage and stopped at 23 sites. The rover used an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer to examine the Moon’s regolith, the outermost lunar soil layer. Santosh Vadawale and his team at the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad discovered that the regolith near the landing site had a homogeneous elemental makeup, with ferroan anorthosite rock accounting for most of it.

According to Vadawale, these findings support the lunar magma ocean concept, which holds that the Moon’s mantle originated when heavier elements sank deeper and lighter rocks floated to the top, resulting in the outer crust. Interestingly, the chemical composition of the regolith at the South Pole is similar to soil samples from equatorial and mid-latitude regions, lending credence to this notion.

Pragyan also shared new information on the area’s geology. The surface is generally smooth up to 50 meters from the landing site, with no apparent craters or pebbles. Beyond this zone, the rover encountered rocks that were most likely ejected from neighbouring craters and structures around the edges of tiny craters.

According to Vadawale, understanding the elemental makeup of the lunar surface at this spot provides critical “ground truth” for future remote-sensing missions and lunar landing planning.

The mission also revealed evidence of a cataclysmic collision caused by a meteorite four billion years ago, which formed one of the solar system’s largest basins, the South Pole-Aitken basin.

This could have been thrown to the surface from the Moon’s composition and magnesium from far below. Anil Bhardwaj of India’s Physical Research Laboratory stated that the effect ‘dug a deeper area of the Moon.‘

Chandrayaan-3 will also collect data to aid in discovering frozen water on the Moon’s south pole, a scientific aim and prospective destination for human exploration. India has announced another lunar mission for 2025/26 to collect samples from the Moon’s surface, which will be returned for study.

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