India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission was launched last summer and its lander, Vikram, touched down on the lunar surface last August. Shortly afterward, it released a rover named Pragyan. Since then, the rover has been orbiting near the moon’s south pole, collecting and studying soil samples and measuring seismic activity and atmospheric conditions.

A team of geologists and planetary scientists from India’s Physical Research Laboratory, in collaboration with colleagues from the UR Rao Satellite Centre and the Space Applications Centre, both in India, analysed soil samples collected by Pragyan and found evidence supporting the theory that the lunar surface was completely molten shortly after its formation.

In her article published in the journal Naturethe group describes their analysis of the radiation data sent back from the rover’s alpha particle X-ray spectrometer.

As part of the soil survey, the rover used its alpha X-ray spectrometer 23 times to learn more about the composition of the moon’s regolith. So far, the data sent back by the sensor has shown that all 23 samples consist primarily of ferroan anorthosite.

Sensor data from other projects have shown that regolith in other areas, such as the equator and mid-latitudes of the moon, is made of roughly the same material. This, the researchers say, suggests a uniform layer of material covering the moon.

Such a uniform layer supports theories that the entire surface of the Moon was covered by molten magma in its early history, due to the way it was formed. The same theory also suggests that the Moon was formed when a large object called Theia slammed into the Earth, ejecting huge amounts of surface material into space.

The material fused together to form the moon, according to the theory. This also explains why so many moon rocks have a similar composition to those found on Earth. Such a collision would have generated a lot of heat, which would explain a layer of molten magma covering the moon’s surface.

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