Why do seismic activities occur on the Moon? ISRO made a big claim

New Delhi : The seismic activity on the moon may be due to meteorite impact or heat. ISRO claimed this. The Indian space agency also said that it needs to be studied. ISRO did a preliminary analysis on the data obtained from Chandrayaan-3’s earthquake-indicating equipment. It said that seismic activity in the moon’s soil may be due to meteorite impacts in the past or local heat-related effects. Researchers said that detailed study is needed to get more information from the data.

‘Meteorite impact or heat could be the reason’

The research paper published in the journal ‘Icarus’ is a summary of the observation of 190 hours of data recorded by the Lunar Seismic Activity Instrument (ILSA). ‘ILSA’ is one of the five major scientific instruments that were carried by Chandrayaan-3’s ‘Vikram’ lander and ‘Pragyan’ rover. ‘Chandrayaan-3’ made a successful ‘soft landing’ on the south pole of the Moon on August 23, 2023.

Research is needed on this- ISRO

Researchers at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said that the earthquake detector ILSA operated continuously until September 2, 2023. After that it was turned off and packed back. After this, the lander was moved to a new point about 50 centimeters away from the initial point. They said that ILSA worked for about 218 hours on the lunar surface, of which 190 hours of data is available.

What has been found in the research so far

We identified more than 250 distinct signals, of which about 200 were associated with known physical activities of the rover or the operation of scientific instruments, the study authors wrote. The authors considered 50 signals that could not be linked to lander or rover activities as unrelated events. They wrote that unrelated signals recorded by Ilsa could possibly be due to the impact of micrometeoroids in the vicinity of the instrument, local thermal effects on the soil, or thermal adjustments within lander subsystems.

A micrometeoroid is a very small meteoroid or remnant of a meteoroid, typically less than a millimetre in diameter. The researchers also found that during its operation, ILSAs also recorded wide variations in temperature from (minus) 20 degrees Celsius to (plus) 60 degrees Celsius. They said detailed study is needed to understand the possible sources of ILSAs data. ILSAs is the first instrument to record seismic data from the Moon’s polar region and the second instrument to record ground movements on the Moon after NASA’s Apollo missions four decades ago.