No one had reached before… Scientists made big claims about where Chandrayaan-3 had landed

New Delhi: India’s ‘Chandrayaan-3’ probably landed on one of the oldest craters of the Moon. Scientists who analyzed the images received from the mission and satellite have expressed this possibility. A pit on any planet, satellite or other celestial object is called a crater. These craters are formed by volcanic eruptions. Apart from this, craters are also formed when a meteorite collides with another body. Researchers from the Physical Research Laboratory and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said that the crater on which Chandrayaan-3 landed was formed during the Nectarian period. The Nectarean period dates back to 3.85 billion years ago and is one of the oldest time periods on the Moon.

Associate Professor S. in the Planetary Science Division of the Physical Research Laboratory. Vijayan said the site where Chandrayaan-3 landed is a unique geological place, where no other mission has reached. The images received from the mission’s rover are the first pictures of the Moon taken by a rover at this latitude. These show how the Moon evolved over time.

When a star collides with the surface of a large body like a planet or the Moon, a crater is formed and the material displaced from it is called ejecta. Vijayan, author of the study published in the journal Icarus, said that when you throw a ball on sand, some part of the sand gets displaced or bounces outward and turns into a small pile, ejecta is also formed in the same way.

Chandrayaan-3 had landed on one such crater – which is about 160 kilometers in diameter and photographs show it to have an almost semi-circular structure. The researchers said it was probably half of the crater and the other half may have been buried under ejecta from the South Pole-Aitken Basin. Pragyan was landed on the lunar surface by Chandrayaan-3’s lander Vikram.

This Chandrayaan, launched by ISRO, made a soft landing near the south pole of the Moon on August 23, 2023. The place where Chandrayaan landed was named Shiv Shakti Point on 26 August 2023.