The Moon’s south pole was once covered in an ocean of liquid molten rock, according to scientists.
Remnants of the ocean were found by India’s historic Chandrayaan-3 mission that landed on the south pole last August, and explored this isolated and mysterious area where no craft had ever landed before.
The findings lend weight to the theory that magma formed the Moon's surface around 4.5 billion years ago, and help back up an idea called the Lunar Magma Ocean theory about how the Moon formed.
Scientists think that when the Moon formed 4.5 billion years ago, it began to cool and a lighter mineral called ferroan anorthosite floated to the surface. This ferroan anorthosite - or molten rock - formed the moon’s surface.
The team behind the new findings found evidence of ferroan anorthosite in the south pole, reports the BBC.
“The theory of early evolution of the Moon becomes much more robust in the light of our observations,” said Dr Santosh Vadawale from the Physical Research Laboratory, who is co-author of the paper published in Nature on Wednesday.
The findings are just some of the scientific data collected during the Chandrayaan-3 mission which eventually hopes to discover ice water on the South Pole. That discovery would be a game-changer for space agencies’ dreams of building a human base on the Moon.
India plans to launch another mission to the Moon in 2025 or 2026 when it hopes to collect and bring back to Earth samples from the lunar surface for analysis.
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) mission became the first country to touch down near the lunar south pole, and made India the fourth space agency to successfully land on the Moon, after Russia, America and China.