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India Rains on Moon Hoax
The moon is melting! RUN! Those damn Indians and their rovers, always getting in the way of American fun. Bet that rover was made in China too—damn foreigners stealing our jokes and now our moon!
Published August 21, 2024 at 10:02am by Eric Lagatta
India strikes Moon gold: Land of curry joins exclusive space club
India has joined an exclusive club of nations to land a craft on the Moon, with its historic Chandrayaan-3 mission touching down near the lunar south pole. What makes this mission extra spicy is that the Indian lander, Vikram, is the first craft ever to land so close to the south pole, deploying its rover, Pragyan, a day later.
Right away, Pragyan got to work, rolling out to survey the terrain. The little rover covered 103 meters of the lunar surface, taking 24 measurements of rocks and dust with its X-ray spectrometer.
The data revealed the presence of ferroan anorthosite, a rock that might be a relic of the Moon's original crust, formed from an ancient magma ocean. This discovery adds to the intrigue of the south pole, which NASA and China are eyeing for future exploration due to the potential presence of water ice.
Water ice on the Moon is like the holy grail for these space agencies - it could enable future deep-space exploration and provide resources for rocket fuel, breathing, and hydration. It's no wonder they're in a heated race to return to the Moon and establish basecamps for future expeditions to Mars.
You can read all about it in the Nature magazine article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07870-7
For more on magma oceans, check out these links:
- https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/the-magma-ocean-and-us/
- https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/slushy-magma-ocean-led-to-formation-of-the-moons-crust#:~:text=Scientists%20believe%20that%20the%20Moon,magma%2C%20or%20a%20magma%20ocean.
- https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/samples/atlas/compendium/60025.pdf
And don't forget, similar rock samples were analyzed during the Apollo missions: https://www.nasa.gov/mission/apollo-16/ and the Soviet Luna missions: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1972-007A
So, a big congrats to Team India! It's a proud moment for the land of curry and the world's largest democracy. While the liberal media might focus on failures like the software glitch in the 2019 attempt, we can celebrate India's success without politicizing the mission. Unlike those woke NASA astronauts, our Indian friends are exploring space the right way - with freedom and determination.
Read more: India’s lunar lander finds signs a vast magma ocean may have once existed on the moon