The South Pole – Aitken Basin is the largest and also the oldest impact crater on the Moon and preserves the memory of the beginning of the history of the Solar System and possibly the origin of the Earth satellite. It has now become clear that, in fact, during future moon landings, astronauts have a great chance of collecting exactly the rocks that emerged as a result of an ancient impact from the deep bowels of our natural satellite. Therefore, it will be possible to understand many things from these rocks, especially to finally solve the question of how the Moon emerged.

The impact formation in one of the largest craters in the Solar System was actually not immediately noticed. When the large dark area on the far side of the Moon was first imaged by the Soviet Moon-3 spacecraft in 1959, it was called the sea.

Later, mountain ranges forming arcs around the edges of the basin were noticed. It turned out that this was the result of the fall of a large asteroid. Data from modern satellite instruments shows that its core is buried among the pool of the Moon’s interior to date, and that it is metal.

The basin was named in honor of the places stretching from south to north: the South Pole and the Aitken crater. Since the diameter of the “dent” exceeded 2,000 kilometers, the size of the falling celestial body should have been measured in tens of kilometers. By comparison, the asteroid blamed for “killing the dinosaurs” 66 million years ago was estimated to be about 10 kilometers in diameter.

Recently planetary scientists determined the age of the South Pole – Aitken basin: 4.33 billion years. We will remind you that the solar system has existed for 4.6 billion years. That is, 300 million years after the appearance of the Earth, the Moon already existed and was “severely injured.”

Scientists are trying to get a picture of how this scar has changed over 4 billion years and what it must have looked like in the beginning. So far, they have been inclined to the fact that the current basin, slightly elongated from north to south, corresponds to its original shape, that is, the crater was oval. This is what happens when a falling asteroid flies at a very low angle. This partially reduces the force of the collision and therefore scatters less debris, which can one day be collected, delivered to Earth and studied comprehensively.

But recently experts from the University of Maryland (USA) came to a different conclusion. As the researchers write Earth and Planetary Science LettersThe remains of the South Pole – Aitken looked at more than two hundred mountain massifs that they could quite confidently interpret as crater rims, meaning that together they form a circle. According to the comparison results, it turned out that the elongation level of the ring was 1.06. Note that exactly 1 means a perfect circle.

Thus, it turned out that the largest lunar crater is almost completely round. It later turned out that the rock that formed it fell rapidly, and as a result of such an impact, the stones flew to great distances.

This has encouraged planetary scientists, so they are counting on future moon landings under the new Artemis program. Astronauts will be sent to the South Pole of the Moon. Possible landing sites for the Artemis-3 crew include, for example, the Mount Mouton region, which probably also forms part of the rim of the ancient basin. Many other options are located much closer to the pole. New data from scientists increases the chances of finding rocks toppled when an asteroid fell through the lunar mantle.