Space & Physics
Chandrayaan-3: The moon may have had a fiery past
A magma ocean might’ve wrapped the ancient moon, suggests findings from India’s robotic lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3.
On 23rd August last year, India’s Chandrayaan-3 made history being the first to soft-land on the moon’s south polar region. The landing marked the end of the high-octane phase of the mission. But its next phase was a slow-burner.
Pragyan, the suitcase-sized rover, that hitched a ride to the moon aboard the lander, Vikram, rolled off a ramp onto the lunar surface. It traversed along the dusty lunar surface slowly, at a pace even a snail could beat. Handlers at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) didn’t want the suitcase-sized rover to risk stumbling over a rock or near a ridge, and jeopardize the mission.
The whitish spots are material excavated from the moon’s interior.
Nevertheless, the rover had a busy schedule to stick to. It was to probe the lunar soil, and relay that scientific data back to earth. Pragyan covered 100 meters in two weeks, before it stopped to take a nap ahead of a long lunar night. At the time, the rover’s battery pack was fully charged, thanks to the on-board solar panels soaking up sunlight during the day.
But lunar weather is harsh, especially at the south pole, where Pragyan napped, temperatures can reach as low as -250 degrees centigrade during the night. Added to that, a lunar night lasts two weeks. ISRO deemed Pragyan had only a 1% chance to survive.
Later, the expected happened, when the rover went unresponsive to ISRO’s pings to wake up.
But ISRO said the rover achieved what it was tasked to do. It relayed data all along for two weeks, examining soil from some 23 locations around the mission’s landing point, Statio Shiv Shakti. As months passed by, a slew of discoveries were made. Sulphur was discovered at the south pole, early on while the mission was ongoing. And only a few months ago, Pragyan found evidence of past weathering activity at the south pole.
But since August this year, research teams from ISRO and the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, India, reported Pragyan’s most important findings yet – one of which sheds light onto the moon’s origins.
Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander, seen from the Pragyan rover’s camera
Moon and the Early Earth
Chandrayaan-3 had carried a radioactive passenger to the moon’s surface – curium-244.
The radioactive curium helps lase the surface: firing alpha particles (which are helium nuclei) at the dusty terrain. Some of these alpha particles bounce off the dust, whereas others evict electrons from the lunar soil, thereby producing x-ray emissions. Keeping watch is the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) on-board the Pragyan rover. In August, PRL scientists published findings in the journal, Nature, based on APXS data, reporting discovery of ferroan anorthosite.
It wasn’t the first ever detection per se of ferroan anorthosite. In fact, Apollo 11 had brought back anorthosite rocks to earth, where they were identified as such. That was in 1969, and Apollo sampled them from the equator. Successive missions by the Soviet Union and most recently China affirmed likewise from mid-latitude – equatorial regions as well. But Pragyan’s detection of the rock type was the first ever from the polar region.
The Pragyan rover’s payload.
Anorthosites are common on earth. In fact, just a year after the Apollo 11 sampled the rock, scientists had evidence of the earth and the moon’s entangled history. The authors noted the similar composition between these rocks, that are geographically widespread. Furthermore, ferroan anorthosite is an igneous rock that forms on earth when hot lava produced in volcanic eruptions cools down.
And scientists had piled up evidence in support of a similar process that underwent on the moon. The anorthosite rocks on the moon are old, in fact, more than 4 billion years ago – a figure close to the earth’s inception with rest of the solar system – around 4.5 billion years. Scientific consensus has been that the moon was formed from remnants of a collision between the early earth and a rogue Mars-sized planetary body.
But the collision energy would have yielded a moon that was molten. A lava blanketing the surface – aka a global magma ocean. As this ocean cooled, minerals amongst which is plagioclase (a class of feldspar) crystallized and formed the anorthosite rocks on the moon. It’s commonly called the lunar magma ocean hypothesis.
When Pragyan treaded over the dusty lunar terrain, it didn’t register the anorthosite as a physical rock per se. Instead, it observed remnants of the rock, as fine powder.
Meteorites beat down rocks to fine powder, as they slam into the moon from space with regular impunity. On earth, the ground is saved by the presence of an atmosphere. But the moon virtually has no atmosphere. Nor does it have water to wear down the rocks. The surface is extremely hot during the lunar day – in fact, when Chandrayaan-3 landed on the moon, the surface temperature was some 50 degrees centigrade. Just a few months ago, Pragyan revealed possible signs of rock degradation from the rims of a crater.
Moon dust opens doors to the past
The fact the moon doesn’t (and can’t) sustain an atmosphere helps it make an attractive destination to learn more about our planet and the satellite’s shared origins. There’s no chemistry to remove traces of the moon’s early evolution from the lunar dust. As such, the dust opens doors to the past.
Space explorations missions soft-landing on the surface study this dust – or sample and shuttle them to earth for scientists to study them in detail.
In fact, Pragyan revealed a crater that’s amongst the oldest ever discovered on the moon. The findings were published in the journal, Icarus, in September. Hidden in plain sight, the rover’s navigation camera, NavCam, spotted subtle stretch marks on the surface, that were confirmed later with the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter (which has been orbiting the moon since 2019). In fact, this crater was found buried under nearby craters, most notably the South Pole-Aitkin basin located 350 km away. The basin is the largest impact crater in the entire solar system (some 2,500 km wide and 8 km deep) touted to have formed millions of years ago.
And this became subject to an earlier paper that PRL scientists authored, and was published in August. Pragyan identified material thought to have emerged from the moon’s interior. The APXS instrument picked up unusually high magnesium content in the vicinity. The authors speculate the meteorite that created the basin probably dug up magnesium from deep inside the moon’s upper mantle, and spewed them into Pragyan’s vicinity.
But some experts believe in an alternate explanation. They believe the magnesium might have come from surface rocks in the vicinity, and not from the upper mantle. In fact, the authors acknowledged this amongst other possible alternatives. Nonetheless, the Chandrayaan-3’s findings doesn’t dispute the lunar magma ocean hypothesis either, if not backing it outright. Saying that, the theory lives on to fight another day.
Space & Physics
NASA’s Artemis II Captures Stunning ‘Earthset’ Over the Moon
NASA’s Artemis II crew captures a rare Earthset over the Moon, revealing lunar basins, craters, and Earth’s night-day divide.
NASA’s Artemis II mission has captured a striking new perspective of the Moon, showing Earth setting beyond the lunar horizon in a rare and visually dramatic moment from deep space.
The image, taken on April 6, 2026, at 6:41 p.m. EDT by the Artemis II crew during their journey around the far side of the Moon, reveals Earth partially dipping behind the Moon’s curved limb—an event often described as an “Earthset.”
A Geological Snapshot of the Moon
Beyond its visual impact, the image offers a detailed look at the Moon’s complex surface.
The Orientale basin, one of the Moon’s most prominent impact structures, is visible along the edge of the lunar surface. Nearby, the Hertzsprung Basin appears as faint concentric rings, partially disrupted by the younger Vavilov crater, which sits atop the older geological formation.
Also visible are chains of secondary craters—linear indentations formed by debris ejected during the massive impact that created the Orientale basin.
Artemis II: Earth in Shadow and Light
The photograph also captures Earth in a moment of contrast.
The darkened portion of the planet is in nighttime, while the illuminated side reveals swirling cloud formations over Australia and the Oceania region, offering a reminder of Earth’s dynamic atmosphere even from hundreds of thousands of kilometres away.
Artemis II: A New Era of Lunar Exploration
The Artemis II mission marks a major step in NASA’s return to the Moon, carrying astronauts on a crewed journey around the lunar surface for the first time in over five decades.
Images like this not only provide scientific insights into lunar geology but also offer a powerful visual connection between Earth and its nearest celestial neighbour—highlighting both the scale of space exploration and the fragility of our home planet.
Space & Physics
MIT Develops System to Boost Data Centre Efficiency by Up to 94%
MIT researchers develop Sandook, a system that boosts data centre efficiency by up to 94% without new hardware, improving SSD performance.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a new system that significantly improves data centre efficiency by optimising the performance of storage devices, potentially reducing the need for additional hardware.
The system, called Sandook, addresses a persistent challenge in modern data centres—underutilisation of storage devices due to performance variability. By simultaneously tackling multiple sources of inefficiency, the approach delivers substantial performance gains compared to traditional methods.
Data Centre Efficiency: Addressing a Hidden Bottleneck
In data centres, multiple storage devices such as solid-state drives (SSDs) are often pooled together so that applications can share resources. However, differences in device performance mean that slower drives can limit overall system efficiency.
MIT researchers found that these inefficiencies stem from three key factors: hardware variability across devices, conflicts between read and write operations, and unpredictable slowdowns caused by internal processes like garbage collection.
To overcome this, the team developed Sandook, a software-based system designed to manage these issues in real time.
Two-Tier Intelligent Architecture
The system uses a two-tier architecture, combining a global controller that distributes tasks across devices with local controllers that react quickly to performance slowdowns.
This structure allows Sandook to dynamically balance workloads, rerouting tasks away from devices experiencing delays and optimising performance across the entire system.
The system also profiles the behaviour of individual SSDs, enabling it to anticipate slowdowns and adjust workloads accordingly.
Significant Performance Gains
When tested on real-world tasks such as database operations, AI model training, image compression, and data storage, Sandook demonstrated major improvements.
The system increased throughput by between 12 percent and 94 percent compared to conventional methods, while also improving overall storage utilisation by 23 percent. It enabled SSDs to achieve up to 95 percent of their theoretical maximum performance—without requiring specialised hardware.
A More Sustainable Approach
Researchers emphasised that improving efficiency is critical given the cost and environmental impact of data centre infrastructure.
“There is a tendency to want to throw more resources at a problem to solve it, but that is not sustainable in many ways. We want to be able to maximize the longevity of these very expensive and carbon-intensive resources,” said Gohar Chaudhry, lead author of the study, ina media statement.
“With our adaptive software solution, you can still squeeze a lot of performance out of your existing devices before you need to throw them away and buy new ones,” she added.
Unlocking Untapped Potential
The system also addresses the challenge of inconsistent device behaviour over time.
“I can’t assume all SSDs will behave identically through my entire deployment cycle. Even if I give them all the same workload, some of them will be stragglers, which hurts the net throughput I can achieve,” Chaudhry explained.
By continuously adjusting workloads, Sandook ensures that even underperforming devices contribute effectively without dragging down overall performance.
Researchers say the system could be further enhanced by integrating new storage technologies and adapting to predictable workloads such as artificial intelligence applications.
“Our dynamic solution can unlock more performance for all the SSDs and really push them to the limit. Every bit of capacity you can save really counts at this scale,” Chaudhry said.
Implications
As demand for data processing continues to surge, innovations like Sandook could play a critical role in making data centres more efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally sustainable—without requiring massive infrastructure expansion.
Space & Physics
NASA to launch first crewed Artemis Moon mission on April 1
NASA will launch Artemis II on April 1, marking the first crewed mission around the Moon in over 50 years.
Artemis will be the first human mission to travel beyond low-Earth orbit since the Apollo era, and it is designed as a 10-day journey that will take astronauts on a flyby around the Moon before returning to Earth.
NASA is set to make history with the launch of its first crewed Artemis mission around the Moon, with liftoff targeted for April 1, 2026, marking humanity’s return to deep space exploration after more than five decades.
The mission, known as Artemis II, will carry four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft using NASA’s powerful Space Launch System rocket. The launch is scheduled from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with additional backup launch opportunities extending through early April.
This will be the first human mission to travel beyond low-Earth orbit since the Apollo era, and it is designed as a 10-day journey that will take astronauts on a flyby around the Moon before returning to Earth.
The crew includes NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The mission is expected to test critical systems such as life support, navigation, and the spacecraft’s heat shield in deep space conditions.
Unlike future Artemis missions, Artemis II will not land on the lunar surface. Instead, it serves as a crucial step toward upcoming missions that aim to establish a sustained human presence on the Moon and eventually enable crewed missions to Mars.
NASA officials say the mission represents a major milestone in space exploration, combining international collaboration and advanced technology to usher in a new era of human spaceflight.
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