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Moon: The Unsolved Mysteries

Moon is the heavenly body to which dozens of spacecraft, both manned and unmanned, have been launched. Many of them have explored the Moon successfully. Men have walked on the Moon and brought soil and rock samples from there.

Then, why new spacecraft like Chandrayaan-1 were launched towards the Moon? Don't we already know a lot about the Moon, thanks to many spacecraft that have already explored it in the past?

Of course, there are valid reasons for launching spacecraft towards Moon even today. It is true that earlier spacecraft have provided valuable information about the Moon in large amounts.
But still, there are many exciting things associated with the Moon about which we do not know for sure. The questions that confront humanity in this regard include:

• Is it true that Moon came into existence as a result of a gigantic collision of a large Mars sized body with the Earth?
• Once formed, how did the Moon gradually change over a period of time?
• Was there any magnetic field associated with
the Moon for sure? If so,
• What happened to the lunar magnetic field?
• In what quantities different kind of minerals are present on the Moon and where?
• What about the presence of Helium-3 on the Moon, which scientists think as a clean and efficient fuel
for the future nuclear fusion reactors?
• Exactly, what kind of dangerous radiations surround the Moon and how strong are they?

Lunar Rock

Chandrayaan-1 gathered information to find answer to some of these questions. In fact, Chandrayaan-1 was India's very first spacecraft to leave Earth orbit and to proceed towards another heavenly body. And, sending a spacecraft to explore other heavenly bodies is not an easy task and poses many challenges. But, those challenges were successfully met
and Chandrayaan-1 gathered scientific information in large quantities. Such information later resulted in many important discoveries.

Helium-3