Indian Robot Discovers Mysterious Vibrations on the Moon's Surface

Intan Rakhmayanti Dewi, CNBC Indonesia

Tech

Friday, 08/09/2023 12:35 WIB

Pictured: In this photo released by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, the word for “moon plane” in Sanskrit, lifts off from Sriharikota, India. (AP/)

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – A few weeks ago, India’s Chandrayaan-3 rover successfully landed on the lunar surface. This success made India the fourth country to successfully land on the Moon, and the first country to land near the south pole.

Since landing, the robot has been on a mission to examine the composition of the soil on the Moon. The aim is to detect sulfur, aluminum, calcium, iron, chromium, titanium, manganese, silicon and oxygen.

Apart from carrying out the main mission, a robot named Vikran also provides some quite interesting findings.

Equipped with the Instrument for Seismic Activity of the Moon (ILSA), Vikram has been monitoring movement, whether caused by impacts to the Moon, rovers moving the ground, or natural earthquakes on the Earth’s satellite.

“ILSA consists of six high-sensitivity accelerometers, which are fabricated locally using a Silicon Micromachining process,” explained the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), quoted from IFL Science, Friday (8/9/2023).

As well as detecting the movement of the rover, ISRO also detected an apparently natural event on August 26, 2023. This event is currently being investigated.

Earthquakes were detected on the Moon via seismographs taken by the US Apollo program, providing valuable data on the makeup of the Moon.

Interpreting the data, scientists argue that the Moon has an inner core that is about 500 kilometers wide, 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 together.

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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