NEW DELHI, Aug 30: “Smile, Please,” Chandrayaan-3 rover Pragyan on Wednesday shared an image of the lander Vikram. It was the first picture that Pragyan has clicked using its Navigation camera since landing on the moon. Until now, all the photos and videos that were shared with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had been captured by the lander Vikram.
Sharing the photograph on Twitter, the ISRO called it the “image of the mission.” “Smile, please📸! Pragyan Rover clicked an image of Vikram Lander this morning. The image was taken by the Navigation Camera onboard the Rover (NavCam). NavCams for the Chandrayaan-3 Mission onboard the rover, have been developed by the Laboratory for Electro-Optics Systems (LEOS) in Bengaluru,” it said.
The Chandrayaan-3 Mission has captivated the public attention since launching nearly six weeks ago in front of thousands of cheering spectators, and its successful touchdown on the Moon last week came just days after a Russian lander crashed in the same region. India became only the fourth country to achieve that feat, and the first to land on the uncharted south pole of Earth’s nearest celestial neighbour.
Post the soft landing on the lunar surface, the Pragyan rover rolled out from the Vikram lander and since then has been traversing on the Moon. Apart from taking pictures it has also been carrying out in-situ scientific experiments. The image of the lander also shows the deployment of the Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) and Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA). These two are among the four payloads onboard the lander.
The ChaSTE payload measures the temperature profile of the lunar topsoil around the pole while the ILSA’s objective is to measure the seismicity around the landing site. The new photo comes just a day after the rover discovered sulphur near the south pole besides detecting traces of aluminium, calcium, iron, chromium, titanium, manganese, silicon and oxygen, ISRO had announced on Tuesday.
“The Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument onboard Chandrayaan-3 Rover has made the first-ever in-situ measurements on the elemental composition of the lunar surface near the south pole. These in-situ measurements confirm the presence of Sulphur (S) in the region unambiguously, something that was not feasible by the instruments onboard the orbiters,” the space agency said in a statement.
(Manas Dasgupta)
