Jakarta –
A few weeks ago, the Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover successfully landed on the surface of the Moon, making India the fourth country to successfully land on the Moon, and the first to land near the south pole.
Since then, the mission, which aims to study the composition of the Moon’s soil, has detected the presence of sulfur, aluminum, calcium, iron, chromium, titanium, manganese, silicon and oxygen.
The robot has also completed its first Moon exploration by measuring the temperature at the south pole of the Moon, and taking the time to take a selfie before ‘sleeping’ to rest before doing its next task.
The rover made headlines for its tools’ ability to analyze soil composition (and find molten ice). Apart from that, the lander named Vikram who took him has also provided some quite interesting insights.
Equipped with the Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA), the lander has been monitoring movement, whether caused by impacts to the Moon, rovers moving the ground, or natural earthquakes on the Moon.
“ILSA consists of six high-sensitivity accelerometers, which are fabricated locally using a Silicon Micromachining process,” said the Indian space and research organization ISRO, as quoted from IFL Science, Thursday (7/9/2023).
The core sensing element consists of a spring mass system with structured electrodes. External vibrations cause deflection of the spring, resulting in a change in capacitance which is converted to voltage.
As well as detecting the movement of the rover rover, ISRO also detected a seemingly natural event on August 26, 2023, which they are currently investigating.
Earthquakes have been detected on the Moon via seismographs taken by the US Apollo program, providing us with valuable data about the makeup of the Moon. Interpreting the data, scientists suspect that the Moon has an inner core of about 500 kilometers, much denser than Earth’s.
Moonquakes are not thought to be caused by the movement of tectonic plates, as they are on Earth. Instead, Earth’s gravity is thought to cause intense tidal pressure on the Moon, breaking it apart and causing the pieces to rub against each other.
With the completion of the Apollo seismograph mission in 1977, it is hoped that the Vikram lander will be able to tell us more about these earthquakes, and how they affected the Moon.
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(rns/fay)
2023-09-07 08:48:45
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