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Historic First: ISRO's Chandrayaan-2 Achieves What No Space Agency Ever Could
Historic First: ISRO's Chandrayaan-2 Achieves What No Space Agency Ever Could - Captures Sun's Fury Hitting Moon
The groundbreaking observation was made using the Chandra Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2 (CHACE-2) instrument onboard India's orbiter, proving once again that ISRO operates at the cutting edge of space exploration.
India just rewrote the rules of space science. In a landmark scientific breakthrough that has stunned the global space community, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced that its lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-2 has made the first-ever observation of the effects of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) from the Sun on the Moon's exosphere, a feat no other space agency in the world has accomplished.
Coronal Mass Ejections are huge bursts of solar wind and magnetic fields released from the Sun's corona. They can send billions of tons of charged particles hurtling through space.
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The groundbreaking observation was made using the Chandra Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2 (CHACE-2) instrument onboard India's orbiter, proving once again that ISRO operates at the cutting edge of space exploration.
During a rare solar event on May 10, 2024, a series of CMEs impacted the Moon, leading to a dramatic increase in the total pressure of the dayside lunar exosphere, the extremely thin atmosphere surrounding the Moon. ISRO scientists reported that the number density of neutral atoms and molecules in the exosphere increased by more than an order of magnitude, confirming theoretical predictions that had never before been validated through direct observation until India did it.
The Moon's exosphere, classified as a surface boundary exosphere, is highly sensitive to solar activity due to the absence of a global magnetic field. The CME event enhanced the liberation of atoms from the lunar surface, temporarily altering the Moon's atmospheric conditions and Chandrayaan-2 captured it all in unprecedented detail.
ISRO said the findings not only deepen scientific understanding of lunar space weather but also have game-changing implications for future lunar missions and the design of human habitats on the Moon. As humanity prepares to colonize the Moon, India is leading the way with critical data that will shape the future of lunar bases.
The historic study, titled "Impact of a Coronal Mass Ejection on the Lunar Exosphere as Observed by CHACE-2 on the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter", was published in the prestigious Geophysical Research Letters on August 16, 2025, cementing India's position as a global space superpower.
ISRO explained that the Moon has a very thin atmosphere called an exosphere, where the gas atoms and molecules exist together but hardly ever collide with each other. Because this exosphere starts directly at the Moon's surface, it is classified as a surface-boundary exosphere.
"The Earth's Moon has a very thin atmosphere, which falls under the category of 'exosphere', implying that the gas atoms and molecules in the lunar environment rarely interact despite their coexistence. The boundary of the exosphere is the surface of the Moon and hence the Moon's exosphere falls under the category of 'surface boundary exosphere'," ISRO explained.
The exosphere on the Moon is produced by a number of processes, which involves the interaction of solar radiation, solar wind (ions of Hydrogen, Helium and a small quantity of heavier ions emanated from the Sun) and the impact of the meteorites with the surface of the Moon. These processes liberate atoms and molecules from the surface of the Moon, which become a part of the exosphere.
"In general, the exosphere of the Moon is highly sensitive to even small variations of the factors that are responsible for its creation, and such a factor is the emission of the coronal mass of the Sun, known as CME (short form of Coronal Mass Ejection). CMEs are events when the Sun ejects significant quantities of its building material, comprising mostly Helium and Hydrogen ions. These effects are significant on the Moon, as Moon is an airless body, that too deprived of any global magnetic field, the presence of which would have shielded (even partially) the solar effects on its surface," ISRO said.
When the universe presented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, India was ready. This chance to directly observe the effects of the CME impacting on the Moon came in a rare occurrence on May 10, 2024, when a series of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) were hurled by the Sun. This increased quantity of the solar coronal mass that impacted on the Moon enhanced the process of knocking off the atoms from the lunar surface, thereby liberating them to the lunar exosphere, which manifested as the enhancement of the total pressure in the sunlit lunar exosphere.
"This observation would provide groundbreaking scientific insight in the understanding of the lunar exosphere and space weather effects on the Moon. Apart from pushing the edge of our scientific understanding about the Moon and the lunar space weather (effect of the Sun's emissions on the Moon), this observation also indicates the challenges of building scientific bases on the Moon. Lunar base architects need to account for such extreme events, which would temporarily alter the lunar environment, before the effects subside," ISRO concluded.
Source: ZeeNews
Related Posts: Chandrayaan-2 discovery, Moon exosphere, Coronal Mass Ejections, ISRO lunar research, lunar space weather, CHACE-2 observations,Chandrayaan-2 discovery, Moon exosphere
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