India's Chandrayaan-3 mission has made a groundbreaking discovery, detecting over 250 seismic signals in the Moon's south polar region. Notably, at least 50 of these signals do not correspond to known rover movements or instrument operations, hinting at possible Moonquakes. This is the first time such seismic data has been collected from the Moon’s southern polar region and the first lunar seismic data recorded since the Apollo missions.

The Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) on the Vikram lander carried out this experiment at coordinates 69.37° South and 32.32° East, operating for 190 hours from August 24 to September 4, 2023. ILSA is the first device to measure ground accelerations from this region and utilizes sensors created through silicon micromachining technology.

The data, analyzed and published by ISRO researchers in the scientific journal ICARUS, reveals significant findings. The paper, authored by J John, V Thamarai, Teena Choudhary, MN Srinivasa, Ashwini Jambhalikar, MS Giridhar, Madan Mohan Mehra, Mayank Garg, KV Shila, Krishna Kummari, SP Karantha, Kalpana Arvind, and KV Sriram from ISRO’s Laboratory for Electro-Optics Systems (LEOS) in Bengaluru, details these results.

“Of the 250 seismic events recorded, around 200 are related to Pragyan rover’s movements or instrument operations, while 50 remain unexplained. Further research is needed to determine the causes of these events,” said Sriram, director of LEOS.

The longest continuous signal recorded lasted 14 minutes, correlating with the rover's navigation. Around 60 signals were linked to Pragyan's movements, which were controlled by ground commands. The rover, weighing about 25 kg, moved at a typical speed of 1 cm per second, creating complex ground vibrations detected by ILSA.

“As the rover’s distance from ILSA increased, the signal amplitude decreased. For instance, at 7 meters away, the amplitude was about 200 µg (microgravity), halving at 12 meters and decreasing further to one-tenth at 40 meters,” the paper explains.

Some detected seismic events exceeded ILSA’s design specifications and were categorized as 'uncorrelated events.' The maximum peak-to-peak amplitude of these uncorrelated signals reached up to 700 µg, with frequencies spanning up to 50 Hz. These signals lasted only a few seconds, with several distinct signals noted but not included in the reported count.

This discovery from Chandrayaan-3 offers new insights into the Moon’s seismic activity, particularly in its southern polar region. Continued research is crucial to understand the nature of the unexplained seismic events detected.

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