Schrödinger crater on the Moon taken by NASA's Clementine spacecraft in The ESA-led international robotic mission Heracles aims to return samples from the Schrödinger crater, around 600 km from the South Pole. “Science is the driver for this mission, we listened to the scientific community, and it is very clear: we need more, well-characterised, and diverse samples of lunar rocks,” says ESA’s architecture analyst Markus Landgraf.
The Schödinger crater is interesting as scientists expect it contains water from volcanic processes, and has a geological exposé of lunar history. Schrödinger crater, located at the southern rim of the much bigger South Pole Aitken Basin, is 312 km wide and formed when an object hit the Moon some four billion years ago. Samples from areas inside the crater contain a snapshot of the Moon’s history at the time they were created. The inner ring of the crater contains ancient material untouched as the impact forced layers of the Moon up to a ridge. Signs of recent volcanic activity indicate that eruptions have occurred in the crater half a billion years ago. Taking samples from there offers a snapshot of the youngest volcanic eruption of the Moon to be analysed.