Something is seriously off inside the Moon’s largest and oldest crater… and NASA wants answers. Deep under the South Pole–Aitken Basin, scientists found a mysterious mass of metal — so massive it could change everything we think we know about the Moon’s past. Is it leftover from an ancient impact? A chunk of a lost asteroid? Or something we’ve never seen before? Whatever it is, it’s pulling on the lunar surface in ways that defy expectations. In this video, we’re diving into why NASA is racing to investigate this strange anomaly — and what they expect to find when they get there. Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
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00:03It's here because, once upon a time, an asteroid crashed right into it.
00:08Yep, a lunar crater forms when an asteroid, meteoroid, or a comet slams into the Moon's surface.
00:14And as you can see, it's happened a lot.
00:17But one crater formed in a very different way.
00:20But then, how did it form?
00:22Well, let's rewind a bit.
00:24There's a widely accepted hypothesis that the Moon itself is a product of collision.
00:30Just like all these craters.
00:31But that collision was way, way tougher.
00:35It happened over 4.5 billion years ago, when a huge Mars-sized planet called Theia crashed into Earth.
00:43That event threw a bunch of debris into orbit.
00:46Eventually, it came together to form the Moon.
00:49Now, for a while after that, the Moon was basically a giant ball of lava.
00:54But because the early Moon was very close to Earth, our planet's gravity kept squeezing it, making it even hotter.
01:02In the end, though, the Moon drifted farther away, cooled down, and formed a rocky crust.
01:09Now, moving on.
01:10About 4.3 billion years ago, an asteroid the size of a small country, like Nepal, way bigger than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, slammed into the Moon's far side.
01:21It left an enormous crater called the South Pole-Akin Basin.
01:26It's up to 5 miles deep and about 1,500 miles wide.
01:30For comparison, that's roughly the distance from New York to Dallas, and deep enough to swallow Mount Everest.
01:37Now, scientists think that impact may have dug up and scattered some ancient stuff from deep inside the Moon.
01:44A mixture of materials nicknamed CREEP, short for potassium, rare earth elements, and phosphorus.
01:51It's like a chemical time capsule from when the Moon was still a lava ocean.
01:56Now, you want to know the reason why this area could be even more scientifically interesting than we realized?
02:03You see, until recently, researchers believed the asteroid came from the South, slamming upward and spreading a bunch of radioactive material, that very creep, around the crater's northern rim.
02:16But, after looking closer, scientists realized the impact actually came from the north, which means all that valuable creep ended up on the southern edge instead.
02:27And, guess what?
02:29NASA's Artemis 3 mission happens to be targeting that exact southern region.
02:35Researchers started questioning the old southern impact theory when they compared the Moon's crater with others across the solar system,
02:42mainly Mars' Helles Basin and Pluto's Sputnik Basin.
02:47Here they are.
02:48See?
02:49All three have this bizarre teardrop, or avocado shape, wide on one side and pointy on the other.
02:57And exactly that pointy end usually shows which direction the asteroid came from.
03:02In the case of the South Pole-Aitken Basin, that means the asteroid hit from the north, not from the south.
03:09To confirm it, scientists dug into old data from NASA's Lunar Prospector mission.
03:15It orbited the Moon in 1998 to 1999.
03:19That spacecraft measured radioactive elements on the surface and found high concentrations of thorium, a key part of creep, around the basin's southwestern rim.
03:30Now, the Artemis 3 mission is NASA's big plan to put humans back on the Moon for the first time since 1972.
03:38If everything goes according to schedule, the launch is set for mid-2027, right after Artemis 2 wraps up.
03:47See, Artemis 2, which is supposed to launch before April 2026, will be sort of a dress rehearsal.
03:54Astronauts will orbit the Moon without landing, just to make sure that all the systems work smoothly.
04:01A cosmic test drive.
04:03Artemis 3 is where things are going to get real.
04:06The astronauts are expected to land near the Moon's South Pole, in one of nine possible locations NASA has scouted out.
04:14The only problem is timing.
04:17Artemis 3 has already been delayed a few times, and so has Artemis 2.
04:21Artemis 1 launched in 2022.
04:25It was an uncrewed test flight that went around the Moon and came back just fine.
04:30So, next up is Artemis 2, which will take real astronauts further into space.
04:36Then comes Artemis 3, the big one.
04:39Astronauts are supposed to hang out on the lunar surface for about a week, doing science-y stuff, before heading home.
04:46After that, Artemis 4 and 5 will build and expand a new mini-space station orbiting the Moon.
04:54It's called Gateway.
04:56Think of it as a pit stop in space.
04:59Astronauts can dock there, live for short missions, do experiments, and prepare for landings.
05:04NASA's building it with help from the European Space Agency, Japan, and a few others.
05:10The astronauts are going to travel in the Orion spacecraft, launched by NASA's Space Launch System,
05:16a massive rocket taller than the Statue of Liberty, and strong enough to fling people to the Moon.
05:22To actually land, they'll use the human landing system.
05:27SpaceX's Starship is supposed to take the first cruise down to the Moon's surface once it proves it can land safely.
05:33In the long run, NASA's not going to stop at the Moon.
05:38The big goal is Moon to Mars.
05:41Hopefully, we can use everything we learned from Artemis to build a lunar base,
05:45and eventually send humans all the way to Mars.
05:49And who knows?
05:50Maybe when people land on the Moon, they'll be able to figure out another unsolved mystery.
05:56Flickers, glows, or beams of light that sometimes illuminate our satellite.
06:01Let's dig deeper into this mystery, shall we?
06:05On the night of April 19th, 1787, astronomer William Herschel spotted something weird.
06:13A bright light glowing on the dark part of the new Moon.
06:17It shone for hours and was almost as bright as the Orion Nebula.
06:21What he saw, probably, was what scientists now call a transient lunar phenomenon, or TLP.
06:28Basically, quick little flashes or color changes on the Moon's surface.
06:34TLPs can look like glowing patches, reddish or purple spots, or even hazy clouds that suddenly appear and fade away.
06:42Over the last 2,000 years, people have recorded around 3,000 of these strange Moon flashes,
06:49using telescopes, cameras, or sometimes just their own sharp eyes.
06:53So, what's really going on up there?
06:57Well, there's no single answer.
06:59Lots of different things can cause TLPs, from meteor impacts to gas releases or even electrical activity.
07:07The length of the flash, which can last anywhere from a split second to several hours,
07:12gives scientists clues about what's behind each mysterious lunar-like show.
07:17The super-short flashes, lasting less than a minute, are most likely caused by tiny space rocks crashing into the Moon.
07:26Even a meteoroid, the weight of a billiard ball, can hit the lunar surface hard enough to make it glow for a split second.
07:33The heat from the impact makes rocks shine and then quickly fade as they cool down.
07:38For a long time, scientists suspected these quick flashes were caused by meteor hits.
07:44But they couldn't prove it until the 1990s, when high-speed cameras finally became common in lunar research.
07:51Even then, it wasn't easy to confirm.
07:55Short flashes could have just been camera glitches or electric noise.
07:59The only way to be sure was to catch the same flash from two or more places at once.
08:05Well, that happened for the first time during the Leonid meteor shower in 1999,
08:11when scientists recorded real impact flashes on the Moon.
08:15Later, we got more proof that the Moon was often peppered with space rocks.
08:19While the flashes seemed to cluster in certain areas, like Oceanus Procellerum,
08:24one of the Moon's big, dark planes,
08:26that's likely just because of where scientists have focused their cameras.
08:30A 2024 study showed that meteoroids actually hit the Moon evenly everywhere.
08:37Now, flashes that last a few minutes are probably caused by something totally different.
08:42Gas leaks from inside the Moon itself.
08:46Studies from 2008 and 2009 found that when gas like radon builds up under the lunar surface,
08:52it can suddenly burst out.
08:54Hey, I know how that feels.
08:55And when this radioactive gas escapes and decays, it gives off a faint glow we can see from Earth.
09:03Interestingly, those glowing spots often line up with areas where scientists have already found higher radon levels.
09:11Then, there are the long-haul lights.
09:13They stick around for hours, like the bright glow William Herschel saw back in 1787.
09:19A 2012 study suggested those could actually be caused by solar wind,
09:24a stream of charged particles coming from the Sun.
09:28When that solar wind hits lunar dust, it can charge up the particles and toss them into the air,
09:33well, into space, creating massive dust clouds up to 60 miles high.
09:39These floating clouds might bend or reflect light from stars or planets nearby,
09:44making it look like the Moon itself is glowing.
09:47So, hopefully, we'll get the answers once the Artemis mission lands and starts its exploration.
09:53Hey, I can hardly wait.
09:58That's it for today.
09:59So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
10:04Or, if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!
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