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The South Pole - Aitken Basin is the widest and at the same time the oldest impact crater on the Moon, which preserves the memory of the beginning of the history of the Solar System, and possibly the origin of the Earth's satellite. Now it turned out that, in fact, during the future landings on the moon, astronauts have a great chance to collect exactly those rocks that an ancient impact raised from the deep bowels of our natural satellite. Therefore, it will be possible to understand a lot from these rocks, in particular, to finally solve the question of how the Moon appeared.
In one of the largest craters in the solar system, impact formation was not actually immediately recognized. When the large dark area on the far side of the Moon was first imaged by the Soviet Moon-1959 spacecraft in 3, it was called a sea.
Later, mountain ranges that form arcs were noticed at the edges of the basin. As a result, it became clear that this was the result of the fall of a large asteroid. Data from modern satellite devices suggest that its core is buried among the pool in the lunar interior to this day - and it is metallic.
The name of the basin was given in honor of the places between which it stretches from south to north: the South Pole and the Aitken crater. Since the "dent" exceeds 2000 kilometers in diameter, the size of the fallen celestial body should have been measured in tens of kilometers. By comparison, the asteroid blamed for "killing the dinosaurs" 66 million years ago was estimated to be about 10 kilometers across.
Recently, planetary scientists specified the age of the South Pole - Aitken basin: 4,33 billion years. We will remind you that the solar system has existed for 4,6 billion years. That is, 300 million years after the appearance of the Earth, the Moon already existed and was "severely wounded."
Scientists are trying to make a picture of how this wound has changed over four billion years and what it should have been like in the beginning. Until now, they were inclined to the fact that the current somewhat elongated basin in the direction from north to south corresponds to its original shape, that is, the crater turned out to be oval. This is what happens when a falling asteroid flies at a very low angle. This partially reduces the force of the impact, and therefore, less debris is scattered, which one day can be picked up, delivered to Earth and comprehensively studied.
But recently, specialists from the University of Maryland (USA) came to a different conclusion. As the researchers write in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, they looked at more than two hundred mountain ranges, which can be interpreted quite confidently as the remains of the South Pole - Aitken crater rims, that is, together they form a circle. According to the results of their comparison, it turned out that the level of elongation of the ring is 1,06. Note that exactly 1 means a perfect circle.
Thus, the largest lunar crater turned out to be almost perfectly round. Then it turns out that the bolide, which formed it, fell rapidly and from such an impact the stones flew to huge distances.
This encouraged planetary scientists, so they are counting on future landings on the moon under the new Artemis program. Astronauts are going to be sent to the South Pole of the Moon. Among the possible landing sites of the Artemis-3 crew is, for example, the area of Mount Mouton, which probably also forms part of the edge of the ancient basin. Many other options are located much closer to the pole. New data from scientists give more chances to find rocks there, knocked out by the fall of an asteroid from the lunar mantle.
