The article was published at The Conversation.
Iraklis Giannakis is a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen.
The US robotic rover Perseverance landed on Mars in February of 2021. Millions of people worldwide watched the landing of the Mars 2020 mission, reflecting the renewed interest in space exploration. China launched a mission to Mars called Zhourong, consisting of a lander and rover.
The last decade has seen the deployment of five and six planetary rovers. The first one was America's Mars landing in 2012 followed by China's three Chang'e missions that landed on the moon.
There are some good videos for you. It was created with a sketch.
The Chang'e-4 lander and Yutu-2 rover were the first humans to land on the far side of the moon. The Apollo 8 mission in 1968 saw the first time that humans saw the far side of the moon.
We developed a tool that could detect the layers beneath the moon's surface, which had never been done before. Insights into how the moon evolved were provided by the tool.
The hidden side of the moon is an ideal place to build radio telescopes because it blocks all the noise from human activity.
The ground penetrating radar is a ground penetrating radar.
The recent Chinese and US rover missions were the first to use ground-penetrating radar on site. This ground-breaking radar is going to be used to map the surface of future planetary missions, where it will be used to shed light on what is happening below the ground.
Significant information regarding the type of planetary soils and their subsurface layers can be retrieved by GPR. This information can be used to get an insight into the geological evolution of an area and to assess its structural stability for future planetary bases and research stations.
The first GPR images from Mars are expected to be published in 2022. China's Chang'e 3, 4 and -5 lunar missions provided the first planetary on-site GPR data, which was used to investigate the structure of surface layers of the far side of the moon.
GPR's inability to detect layers with smooth boundaries is one of its major drawbacks. This means gradual variations from one layer to another go undetected, giving the false impression that the subsurface consists of a block, while in fact it may be a much more complex structure.
Our team developed a new method to detect these layers using radar signatures of hidden rocks and boulders. The GPR data was captured by the Yutu-2 rover, which landed in the Von Krmn crater, part of the Aitken Basin at the moon's south pole.
The biggest and oldest known crater is believed to have been created by a meteorite impact that penetrated the moon's crust and left behind material from the top mantle. The first 33 feet (10 meters) of the lunar surface had been thought to be one block, but our detection tool revealed a previously unseen layer.
We can use our method to make more accurate estimations of the depth of the lunar soil, which is an important way to determine the stability and strength of the soil foundation for developing lunar bases and research stations.
The new structure suggests that small craters are more important than previously thought and may have contributed more to the materials deposited by meteorite strikes.
We will have a better understanding of the geological history of our satellite and be able to predict what lies beneath the surface of the moon.
The Conversation's article is a Creative Commons licensed one. The original article can be found here.
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