Data from India's historic moon mission supports long-standing lunar theory

The Chandrayaan-3 mission, which landed on the moon’s southern high-latitude regions, has provided new evidence about the moon’s early history. The mission deployed a small rover named Pragyan, equipped with science instruments to analyze particles within the moon’s soil. The rover’s data revealed a uniform composition largely made of a rock called ferroan anorthosite, similar to samples collected during the Apollo 16 mission. This supports the hypothesis that the moon was once covered by an ancient ocean of magma. The findings contribute to scientists’ understanding of how the moon formed and evolved.