Chinese lunar rover made a surprising discovery. Enlighten Moon radar he counted at least nine layers of lava drenched once a place of its landing.
The Pride of China, a small rover “Yutu” (“Jade Hare”), continues to please its creators and the whole Chinese nation. Despite the fact that he is immobilized for a year, recently reported that the rover nonetheless alive and specialists in the world continues to get in touch with him after 15 months spent on the moon.
Launched in December 2013, “Hare” had to work for three months, but fails in motor control immobilize the car at the end of the second lunar day. Lunokhod not only stopped after driving zigzag length of 114 m, it is completely lost the opportunity to move anything, including solar panels, which he must take shelter during the long lunar nights. The device was not designed for the night neukrytym and engineers did not think that he will remain at least partially operational, cooled to -180 ° C.
However, the rover instruments survived, and he is still able to send signals to Earth in the daytime.
In working condition even left his tools, in addition to alpha-particle spectrometer, and the host computer. According to the latest information, scientific instruments continue to collect data, rover observes the sky and the earth plasmosphere in the ultraviolet range.
A year later, did not take long and the first scientific results of the mission, because the discoveries published in major scientific journals – the main measure of success of the project. Recently, the team published a paper in which he presents data with ultraviolet telescope rover, which determines the concentration of radicals OH, as well as neutral atoms of magnesium and aluminum in the exosphere of the Moon.
It turned out that the boundary of the existence of radicals is much lower than previously thought.
However, this recognition of the success rover became Today’s article in the prestigious journal Science, in which scientists reported moonwalker really important discoveries related to the turbulent past of the Moon. Helped make them powerful radar rover, translucent layers of soil to a depth record – up to 400 m, which corresponds to the age of 3.8 billion years ago.
His data scientists have drawn a complete picture of sublunary layers at the landing site of the device – the Bay of Rainbows. It is believed that the crater was formed 27-80 million years ago by the powerful impact of the asteroid.
Radar was able to identify as many as nine separate base layers at the landing site, which suggests a much more turbulent volcanic past of the moon than previously thought.
«The most interesting – two things. The first – that in the era of late volcanic eruptions have been much more, “- said Xiao Lun, author of the publication. Scientists believe that the upper layers of the soil at the landing site moonwalker accumulated dust and debris flown apart from the nearest impact crater. Deeper layers include traces of five consecutive outpourings of lava that flooded the area in hot period. And the long-standing such eruption happened 2.5 billion years ago.
«The second surprise – that the volcanic sea consist not only of basaltic lava, but and pyroclastic rocks from the explosion, “- said the author.
This means that some of the volcanoes on the moon were explosive in nature, and were not accompanied by a slow expiration of lava, as previously thought.
For example, a layer lying at a depth of 240 m, by the nature of the reflection of radio waves similar to those found on Earth are at explosive emission of so-called igneous rock debris. All previous studies of the Moon, including orbiters and American landing missions, revealed only traces of the slow expiration of lava. Explosive volcanic eruptions in the past say that in the interior of the moon may contain more light compounds, including water than previously thought.
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