With the help of the Chang’e-4 station rover, Chinese scientists were able to visualize 300 meters above the Moon’s surface for the first time. Their results reveal billions of years of previously hidden lunar history. A related study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

Chang’e-4, the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the Moon, has been capturing stunning views of impact craters and analyzing minerals from the lunar mantle since landing in 2018. Now it has allowed scientists to look a little deeper. His partner, the Yutu-2 lunar rover, helped in this.

“The rover is equipped with Lunar Penetrating Radar (LPR) technology. It makes it possible to send radio signals deep within the lunar surface,” said Jianqing Feng, lead author of the study, an astrogeologist at the Institute of Planetology. It then listens for dancing echoes reflected from subterranean structures. It is these data that make it possible to create a map of the lunar soil.

In 2020, scientists used LPR to map the upper layers (40 meters) of the Moon’s surface, but so far they have not dug deeper. The new study validated old data and supplemented it with new ones.

The upper 40 meters of the lunar surface consists of several layers of dust, earth, and debris. “A huge crater formed when a large object hit the Moon was hidden inside these materials,” said archaeologist Jianqing Feng.

Feng and colleagues hypothesized that the debris surrounding this formation was debris from the collision. Digging even deeper, scientists discovered five separate layers of lunar lava seeping through the landscape billions of years ago.

Scientists believe that the Moon was formed 4.51 billion years ago, shortly after the Solar System, when a Mars-sized object slammed into Earth, tearing off a piece of our planet.

Similar to Earth, the Moon’s mantle contained pockets of molten magma that poured out through new fissures and caused a series of volcanic eruptions.

“New data from Chang’e-4 shows that the volcanic process is weakening: layers of rock near the Moon’s surface are thinning, suggesting a reduction in lava flow during later eruptions. This means that the Moon then cooled and lost energy. It shows,” he said.

Volcanic activity on the Moon probably ended about 1 billion years ago, but there is some evidence of later activity. Despite the Moon being called “geologically dead,” magma may still be hidden beneath the lunar surface.

The Chang’e-4 lunar mission is not yet complete, which means it will continue its work on the discovery of hidden geological structures on the far side of the Moon. There may be many interesting discoveries that will shed light on the formation history of our moon. Source