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The Enigmatic Moon
Biman Nath
The Mysterious Moon &
India's Chandrayaan Mission
N Bhandari
Vigyan Prasar, India.
pp.88, Price: Rs.195/-
It may come as a surprise to many to hear that
astronomers talk about the origin of the uni-
verse with more conviction than that of the
Moon, our nearest neighbour in space. We
hear of 'precision cosmology” by the methods
of which the contents of the universe are
being weighed to high accuracy. But the ori-
gin, content, structure and evolution of our
lone satellite still remain shrouded in mys-
tery.
And yet the most surprising thing is that these
little known aspects and the enigmatic side of
the Moon are not taught in our schools — our
science text books are written as though ev-
erything is known in the universe, and what-
ever is not known is not worth mentioning. IL
is no wonder then that most people are sur-
prised by the plan to launch a mission to the
moon by India. What's there to know about
the Moon? Didn't the Apollo astronauts walk
on the moon and bring back rock samples?
Why send a spacecraft just to take some more
photographs? They ask and fret about the cost
of the mission.
Amazingly enough, the biggest puzzle about
the Moon was overed just about fifteen
years ago, long after the flurry of lunar mis-
sions in the 70s. The American spacecraft
Clementine discovered the biggest crater on
the Moon, which is now called the South
Pole-Aitken basin, because it stretches from
the lunar south pole to a crater called Aitken.
As a matter of fact, it is the largest of all
impact craters in the solar system, being
roughly 2500 kilometers in diameter and 13
kilometers deep. The object whose impact
with the Moon created it must have been
huge, and one wonders how the Moon sur-
vived the impact, If the basin is deep, then
does its surface show characteristics of the
crust, or the mantle bencath the crust? Is there
water-ice in the permanently shadowed part
ofthe basin? All these questions remain unan-
swered till today. The two sides of the Moon
- one facing us and another looking the other
way — are very different in their topography
and mineral composition. There are more cra-
ters on the other side whereas the near-side
(facing us) has more deep basins (darkened
with lava). When and how did this difference
develop?
Vigyan Prasar has published a book written
by Narendra Bhandari, a renowned authority
on lunar sciences, to mark the launch of the
Indian mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-1.
The author and the publisher both deserve
praise for the lucidly written and well illus-
trated book, which tells the story of the moon,
what the scientists have found out so far and
the puzzles that still remain, in a language
RESONANCE | December 2008
UV 173
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7/17/2009
