The far side of the moon, as photographed by Apollo 13, hangs upside down in the darkness of space. Image: NASA
SPACE — Since first touching down in 2018, China’s Chang’e-4, the first spacecraft to ever land on the far side of the moon, has taken on a breathtaking view of the moon’s dark side. He photographed impact craters and took mineral samples from the moon’s mantle.
The space probe has allowed scientists to visualize layers of structure above 300 meters (1,000 feet) of the lunar surface in finer detail. The visualization results were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets on August 7, 2023. The images reveal billions of years of previously hidden history of the moon.
Departing for the moon, Chang’e-4 brought an explorer robot named Yutu-2. This device is equipped with a technology called Lunar Penetrating Radar (LPR) which allows it to send radio signals far from the surface of the moon. “Then, he listened to the echoes dancing back,” said the study’s lead author, Jianqing Feng. He is a research astrogeologist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.
Scroll to read
Scroll to read
Scientists use echoes, or radio waves that bounce off underground structures, to create maps of the moon’s subsurface. In 2020, scientists used LPR Yutu-2 to map the surface of the 130-foot (40-meter) moon, but have not dug deeper until now.
“These new data show that the 130-foot-high surface of the moon is composed of many layers of dust, soil, and broken rock,” Feng said. Hidden within these objects is a crater that was formed when a large object hit the moon.
Feng and his colleagues hypothesized that the debris surrounding this formation was ejecta, that is, impact debris. Further down, scientists discovered five distinct layers of lunar lava seeping across the landscape billions of years ago.
To note, scientists believe our moon formed 4.51 billion years ago, not long after the formation of the solar system itself. The moon appeared when an object the size of Mars hit Earth and destroyed part of our planet. The moon then continues to be bombarded by objects from outer space for approximately 200 million years. Some of the impacts cracked the moon’s surface.
“Like Earth, the moon’s mantle at that time contained pockets of molten material called magma, which seeped out through newly formed cracks in series of volcanic eruptions,” Feng said.
New data from Chang’e-4 suggests the process has slowed down over time. Feng and his colleagues found that the closer you get to the surface of the moon, the thinner the layers of volcanic rock appear. This suggests that less lava flowed in later eruptions than in previous ones. “(The moon) slowly cools and runs out of steam in the next volcanic stage. Its energy weakens over time,” said Feng.
Volcanic activity on the moon is thought to have subsided about 1 billion years ago, although scientists have found some evidence of volcanic activity 100 million years ago on the moon. The cessation of volcanic activity makes the moon often considered ‘geologically dead’. “However, there may still be magma deep beneath the lunar surface,” Feng said.
Chang’e-4 is not done with its work on the moon. Feng hopes the craft will continue to work and provide more insight into the different and unexpected geological formations. Source: Space.com
“).attr(
type: ‘text/javascript’,
src: ‘
).prependTo(“head”);
if ($(“.instagram-media”).length > 0)
$(”
2023-08-20 17:03:54
#Chinese #Robots #Map #Hidden #Structures #Dark #Side #Moon #space
