India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission has recorded over 250 seismic signals in the Moon’s south polar region, marking the first seismic data collection from this area since the Apollo missions. Of these signals, around 200 were linked to the movement of the Pragyan rover and other scientific instruments. However, 50 signals remain unexplained and could potentially be Moonquakes, raising intriguing possibilities for future studies.
The seismic data was gathered by the Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) on the Vikram lander over 190 hours from August 24 to September 4, 2023. ILSA, equipped with silicon micromachining technology, is the first instrument to measure ground accelerations from the Moon’s southern polar region. Researchers from ISRO’s Laboratory for Electro-Optics Systems (LEOS) published their findings in the journal *ICARUS*. They reported that some of the strongest and longest signals were related to Pragyan’s movement, which generated ground vibrations as it navigated the lunar surface.
Among the 50 unexplained seismic events, some signals had a peak-to-peak amplitude of 700 ?g, lasting only a few seconds. Researchers categorized these as “uncorrelated events” since they could not be tied to any known rover or instrument activities. The signals’ frequency content ranged up to 50 Hz, offering potential evidence of natural lunar seismic activity that warrants further investigation.
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