Produced by: Tarun Mishra
India's Chandrayaan-3 mission has revealed a 160-kilometer-wide ancient crater on the Moon's surface. The discovery was made by the Pragyan rover, which explored the lunar south polar region after its successful landing in 2023.
The newly discovered crater lies around 350 kilometres from the South Pole-Aitken basin, which is known as the largest and oldest impact basin on the Moon. This positions the crater as one of the Moon's oldest geological features.
Scientists believe that the crater predates the formation of the South Pole-Aitken basin, suggesting it has been buried and degraded over time by debris from subsequent impacts.
Navigation and optical high-resolution cameras on Pragyan provided images that revealed the structure of the buried crater, offering important insights into the Moon's early geological history.
The crater was largely concealed beneath layers of regolith—dust and rocks—deposited by later impacts, including significant debris from the South Pole-Aitken event, which contributed around 1,400 meters of material to the region.
This discovery provides a rare chance for scientists to study material that has been deeply buried, dating back to the Moon’s early formation, allowing for new understanding of lunar evolution.
The findings from Chandrayaan-3's rover have excited the global scientific community, offering new opportunities to study the Moon’s geological past, and possibly reshaping current knowledge about lunar terrain formation.