00:03Recently, India's space program sent a lunar lander to the moon as part of the Chandrayaan
00:083 mission.
00:09Now data they have collected is beginning to corroborate other recent evidence that
00:13despite being quiet now, our planet's only natural satellite used to be quite wild.
00:18The Vikram spacecraft landed in an area further south than any other previous moon mission
00:23before it.
00:23The regolith samples they collected were essentially a mix of compounds discovered in every other
00:28lunar sample ever, which they say means that not only was the moon once a volcanic place,
00:32but a layer of magma likely covered its entire surface.
00:36This shouldn't be all that surprising, as the moon is thought to have formed when a
00:39Mars-sized planet collided with Proto-Earth.
00:41Material eventually accreted where the moon orbits today, with the lunar surface taking
00:46hundreds of millions of years to cool after.
00:48Experts say the crystallized heroine anorthocyte rock that comprises its surface is a result
00:53of that cooling process.
00:54Still, mysteries remain about the moon's chaotic past, including why the moon's earth-facing
00:59crust is thinner than the far side, and why its near side also appears to have once been
01:04far more volcanic.
Comments