The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft from India touched down safely inside a buried impact crater that was probably there before the South Pole Atkin (SPA) basin, and it had a circumference of around 160 km and a depth of about 4.4 km. The Physical Research Laboratory and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) came up with this discovery, and they published it in the scholarly journal Icarus. The Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover are part of the mission that landed in the lunar highlands close to the southern pole.
The landing location showcases intricate geological formations that have been formed by multiple impact events. It is situated approximately 350 kilometres from the rim of the SPA basin, the largest impact basin in our solar system. Images taken by the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter and the Pragyan rover’s navigation camera showed that the landing location had linear, groove-like structures that had been created by impacts from a distance.
Exploration of the surrounding area uncovered a severely degraded semicircular formation, which was identified to be an underground impact crater formed by ejecta from the SPA basin. Materials from the SPA basin and deeply excavated lunar materials are hosted by this ancient crater, according to ISRO. It is one of the oldest on the Moon.
