PARIS – Scientists on Wednesday said they could be a step closer to solvingthe riddle behind the Moon’s formation, unveiling the most detailed surveyyet of the far side of Earth’s satellite.
In January, the Chinese spacecraft Chang’e-4 — named after the moongoddess in Chinese mythology — became the first ever craft to touch downon the far side of the lunar surface.
Similar to other bodies in our Solar System, the Moon is believed to havegone through a phase during its formation when it was partially or entirelycomposed of molten rock.
As it cooled, so the hypothesis goes, denser minerals sank to the bottom ofthe magma-ocean, while lighter materials gathered near the surface to formits mantle.
The team landed its probe in the Von Karmen Crater in the Aitken Basin atthe Moon’s South Pole — home to one of the largest impact craters known inthe Solar System.
They detected materials such as olivine and low-calcium pyroxene that arerare elsewhere on the surface.
Authors of the study, which was published in the journal Nature, suggestthat these materials were ejected from the Moon’s upper mantle when it wasstruck by a meteor.
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“Our results support the lunar magma ocean theory, and demonstrate thatthe magma ocean hypothesis can be used to describe the early evolutionhistory of the Moon,” Chunlai Li, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences,told AFP.
Unlike the near side of the moon that always faces the Earth and offersmany flat areas to touch down on, the far side is mountainous and rugged.
The United States, Russia and China have all landed probes on the near sideof the Moon, though neither NASA’s Apollo missions nor the Soviet Union’sLuna probes have ever returned samples of the lunar mantle.
Writing in a linked comment piece, Patrick Pinet, from France’s l’Institutde Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie, said Li’s findings were”thrilling”.
The results “might also affect our understanding of the formation andevolution of planetary interiors,” Pinet wrote, saying that more researchon the far side of the Moon was “of the utmost importance.” -APP/AFP
