Chandrayaan-3 landing site soil linked to first lunar meteorite found on Earth, ISRO study says

The soil at Chandrayaan-3's landing site is closely linked to the first lunar meteorite ever discovered on Earth, researchers at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have found. The study, published in the journal Nature, draws on samples and measurements the mission collected near the Moon's south pole, and suggests the region holds material from multiple layers of the lunar crust.

The team compared the composition of soil and rocks analysed by Chandrayaan-3's instruments at Shiv Shakti Point with laboratory studies of the Calcalong Creek meteorite, widely recognised as the first confirmed lunar meteorite found on Earth. The comparison revealed striking similarities in mineral composition, suggesting both may have originated in similar geological environments on the Moon. That connection matters because lunar meteorites — rocks blasted off the Moon by asteroid impacts that later fall to Earth — arrive with no record of which part of the Moon they came from, and matching them to a specific region has long been difficult.

One of the study's key conclusions is that the soil at Shiv Shakti Point is not made from a single rock type. It is a mixture of materials from different depths of the Moon's crust. Repeated asteroid and meteorite impacts over billions of years excavated underground material and scattered it across the surface, a constant churning that has mixed ancient rocks from different layers into the soil. The landing site therefore preserves a more complicated geological record than previously understood.

Chandrayaan-3 became the first mission to achieve a soft landing near the Moon's south pole in August 2023. Its Vikram lander and Pragyan rover studied rocks, soil composition, temperature variations and elemental abundance on the surface, and those observations are still producing new findings years after surface operations ended.