Report by Prashasti Kulkarni
Back in 1969, on July 16th, a spacecraft named Apollo 11 was successfully launched from Cape Kennedy to land on the Moon, in order to help scientists understand more about the Moon’s features.
Gradually, more missions like the Apollo 11 came up, and researchers discovered the different layers of the Moon: the crust, the mantle, the outer core, and the inner core.
Recently, researchers from CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) have discovered that the Moon’s inner core is made of a solid metal, similar to iron in terms of density. Its outer core is fluid, same as the Earth.
The inner core, discovered due to data from different space missions and lunar laser ranging (the method scientists use to find the distance between the Earth’s surface and parts of the Moon), is around 300 miles or 480 kilometers wide. This takes up 20% of the Moon’s diameter.
The fluid outer core of the Moon was discovered around 20 years ago, but the inner core took longer to find due to its small size.
More about the Moon’s inner structure: The Lunar Mantle Overturn.
Along with the discovery of the inner core, scientists found clues that help validate an early hypothesis (theory, something that hasn’t necessarily been proven to be true) about the movement of material inside one of the layers of the Moon, called the mantle (present between the core and the crust).
Scientists call this the “Lunar Mantle Overturn,” which is the process by which this material inside the mantle rises up, causing the surface of the Moon to be filled with iron-rich elements.
Image Credit: NASA
