Chandrayaan-3 rover lands in oldest crater where ‘no other missions have gone’; S.Vijayan says ‘shows how moon evolved’

Chandrayaan 3: India's lunar mission has landed in one of the oldest craters on the Moon, scientists said on Saturday. The crater where ‘no other missions’ have gone, is 3.85 billion years old, said scientists.

Scientists from the Physical Research Laboratory and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Ahmedabad, said that the crater was formed in the Nectarian period-3.5 billion years ago.

‘No other missions have gone’

According to S Vijayan, an associate professor in the Planetary Sciences Division, Physical Research Laboratory, the mission's Pragyan rover has gone to a place on the Moon that no other missions has visited.

“Chandrayaan-3 landing site is a unique geological setting where no other missions have gone. The images from the mission's Pragyan rover are the first on-site ones of the Moon at this latitude. They reveal how the Moon evolved,” said Vijayan, reported PTI.

Chandrayaan 3: How it landed in a crater

Researchers said that a crater is created when an asteroid strikes the surface of a larger body, displacing material known as ejecta.

The images of the Moon have revealed that half of a crater is buried under ejecta from the South Pole-Aitken basin, the largest and most prominent impact basin on the Moon.

An impact basin is defined as a large, complex crater with a diameter exceeding 300 km, whereas a regular crater is less than 300 km in diameter. In this instance, Chandrayaan-3 was found to have landed within a crater approximately 160 km wide, appearing in images as a nearly semi-circular structure.

“Further, near the landing site, ejecta or material 'thrown out' from another impact crater further away was observed -- images captured by the Pragyan rover revealed that material of the same nature was present at the landing site,” said Vijayan, mentioned a PTI report.

On August 23, 2023, Chandrayaan-3 made a soft landing on the Moon's south pole. The GOI named the landing site as ‘Shiv Shakti Point’.