India's history-making moon rover that landed on the south pole has detected something interesting.
People all across the country were celebrating when the Chandrayaan-3 successfully made it onto the south side of the lunar object for the very first time.
The Pragyan rover has been hard at work ever since that day and has been collecting samples and looking for evidence of water.
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But that doesn't mean the Vikram lander that stored the rover has just been sitting there doing nothing.
It was launched with an Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) and it has been detecting things happening on and below the surface of the moon.
"ILSA comprises a cluster of six high-sensitivity accelerometers, which are indigenously fabricated using the Silicon Micromachining process. The core sensing element consists of a spring-mass system with comb-structured electrodesm," the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said in a statement.
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"External vibrations lead to a deflection of the spring, resulting in a change in capacitance which is converted into voltage.
"ILSA's primary objective is to measure ground vibrations generated by natural quakes, impacts, and artificial events.
"The vibrations recorded during the rover's navigation on August 25, 2023, are depicted in the figure.
"Additionally, an event, seemingly natural, recorded on August 26, 2023, is also shown.
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"The source of this event is currently under investigation."
Some people would think the moon just sits in our orbit and there's nothing really going on with it.
But it seems like there's more than meets the eye.
The ISRO says the instrument that detects lunar seismic activity 'is the first instance of a Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology-based instrument on the moon'.
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Last week, the Pragyan rover made a big discovery.
The ISRO said a laser detector onboard made 'the first-ever in-situ - in the original space - measurements on the elemental composition of the surface near the south pole'.
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"These in-situ measurements confirm the presence of sulphur in the region unambiguously, something that was not feasible by the instruments onboard the orbiters," ISRO said.
The rover also detected aluminum, iron, calcium, chromium, titanium, manganese, oxygen and silicon.
Finding sulphur on the moon is a big deal.
Sara Russell, a professor of planetary sciences at the Natural History Museum in London, told the MailOnline: "Sulphur is usually bonded to important metals like iron and nickel, and these may be important ores that could be used by future astronauts to enable them to live and work on the moon.
"We already know that the moon contains sulphur, from our analyses of rocks returned from the moon by space missions, and from lunar meteorites.
"What we don't really know is the distribution and abundance of sulphur on the moon.
"This has really important implications for understanding the way the moon evolved."
Topics: Space
