Was the moon once a blisteringly hot world? Our lunar neighbour was once covered with an ocean of molten rock, data from India’s Chandrayaan-3 rover suggests [Video]

11:40 EDT 26 Aug 2024, updated 11:43 EDT 26 Aug 2024

While the moon might now seem like a cold, dusty, desert, new evidence from India‘s Chandrayaan-3 mission has revealed this was not always the case.

Analysis of the lunar surface shows that the moon’s south pole was once completely covered by an ocean of molten magma. 

When Chandrayaan-3 landed near the moon’s south pole in August last year, India’s space agency gathered 23 measurements of a never-before-studied region.

Their measurements discovered a uniform layer of ferroan anorthosite, a white rock believed to have floated to the surface of the molten rock during the moon’s formation. 

This supports the ‘Lunar Magma Ocean’ (LMO) theory which claims the whole of the moon’s surface was formed from a cooling layer of magma that formed 4.5 billion years ago.