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Our celestial neighbour has been a source of amazement and enigma since the very beginning, but now, thanks to China's space programme, we're beginning to uncover its history.
In 2018, the Chang'e-4 lander, part of the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA), marked a historic achievement by becoming the first spacecraft to successfully touch down on the far side of the moon, also commonly referred to by some as the dark side.
Since then, it has been capturing remarkable images of impact craters and gathering mineral samples, providing a long-awaited glimpse into the composition that forms the upper 300 metres of the moon's surface.
Recently, the results from the Chang'e-4 mission were released, and the public has been given access to the fascinating history of our much-loved Moon.
Reveal that the top 40 metres of the lunar surface consist of multiple layers of dust, soil, and shattered rocks.
Deep within these layers is a crater, which allegedly formed when a substantial object violently impacted the moon, as per Jianqing Feng, an astrogeologist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, who co-led the pioneering analysis.
Below this, Feng and his colleagues found five separate layers of lunar lava that covered the landscape billions of years ago.
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Over the next 200 years roughly, the moon continued to be repeatedly hit by space debris, resulting in numerous impacts which caused cracks in its surface.
Much like Earth, the moon's mantle held pockets of molten magma, which seeped into the newly formed fissures as a result of volcanic eruptions, Feng explained.
However, the new data provided by Chang'e-4 indicated that the closer the volcanic rock was to the moon's surface, the thinner it became.
The moon was gradually losing heat and exhausting its volcanic activity in its later stages," Feng said. "Its energy was dwindling with time.
It is commonly accepted that volcanic activity on the moon ceased between a billion and 100 million years ago, therefore it is mainly regarded as "geologically inactive".
However, Feng and his co-authors have proposed that there may still be molten rock concealed far beneath the lunar surface.
Chang’e-4 still has a lot of work ahead of it, and Feng and his team hope this is just the start of their groundbreaking mapping of the moon.
This article was first released on 2nd May 2023
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