The Indian lunar rover has captured the first picture of its mothership on the lunar surface – a week after the country made history with its Chandrayaan-3 mission.
The country beat out countries like Russia, China and the US to become the first state to land a spacecraft on the south pole of the moon on August 23.
Not only that, but it also happened on a modest $73 million budget, which is less money than it cost to make the Hollywood space movies Interstellar and Gravity.
The two-week mission is now halfway through, with the The Pragyan lunar rover and Vikram lander race to complete their groundbreaking exploration before both vehicles’ solar-powered batteries run out.
Neither craft is expected to survive the next two-week lunar night.
Looking good: India’s lunar rover has captured the first photo of its mothership on the lunar surface – a week after the country made history with its Chandrayaan-3 mission
‘Please smile! Pragyan Rover clicked on an image of Vikram Lander this morning,” ISRO said in a post sharing two images on X (formerly Twitter).
But before this happens, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has made sure the Vikram lander looks through the eyes of Pragyan.
ISRO officials have released two black-and-white images showing the lander sitting proudly on the dust-covered lunar surface.
‘Please smile! Pragyan Rover clicked on an image of Vikram Lander this morning,” ISRO said in a post that shared the images on X (formerly Twitter).
“The ‘image of the mission’ was taken by the Rover’s onboard navigation camera (NavCam).”
One of the images shows two of Vikram’s scientific sensors deployed on the lunar surface: Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) and the Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA).
The Chandrayaan-3 mission landed on the moon on August 23. A day later, Pragyan descended from Vikram and has been wandering ever since.
One of its scientific work to date is that it is the first machine to find chemical elements ‘in situ’ at the south pole of the moon – where it exists, rather than being picked up from a distance by an orbiter. detected.
It has collected evidence of sulfur, aluminum, calcium, iron, chromium, titanium, manganese, silicon and oxygen, while the search for hydrogen is now underway.
Sara Russell, a professor of planetary sciences at London’s Natural History Museum, said the rover discovery has “really important implications” for researchers and astronauts alike.
ISRO officials have released two black-and-white images showing the lander sitting proudly on the dust-covered lunar surface. One of the images shows two Vikram science sensors deployed on the lunar surface (right)
The rover from Chandrayaan-3 (nicknamed ‘Pragyan’) was taken to the moon aboard the larger lander (‘Vikram’). Just a day after landing, the rover rolled out of its parent craft and began exploring (pictured)
Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) placed this graph on X and shows the chemical elements detected by Chandrayaan-3, including sulfur (S)
“Sulfur is usually bound to important metals like iron and nickel, and these could be important ores that could be used by future astronauts to enable them to live and work on the moon,” she told MailOnline.
“We already know that the moon contains sulfur, from our analyzes of rocks returned from the moon by space missions, and from lunar meteorites.
‘What we don’t really know is the distribution and abundance of sulfur on the moon.
‘This has very important implications for understanding how the moon evolved.
“For example, how much sulfur was lost when the moon first formed in a giant impact, and how do the different rock layers of the moon differ in composition today?”
ISRO has been tweeting regular updates over the past week on the progress of its Chandrayaan-3 mission, including sharing fantastic photos of the southern lunar area.
Science instruments on both the lander and rover will only be active for a total of one Monday (14 Earth days) before losing power — a relatively short mission.
Once the time period is up, the rover and lander become idle on the moon and the mission ends.
Chandrayaan-3’s instruments will cover their days in lunar dust, though it’s not impossible that crewed missions to our natural satellite could recover their parts for reuse.
While India is the fourth country to safely land a spacecraft on the moon after the US, Russia and China, it made history as the first country to do so at the south pole of the moon.
Russia attempted to land a spacecraft on the southern moon on Aug. 19, but failed spectacularly when it spun out of control and wrecked, leaving India clearing the way to seal the feat.
Chandrayaan-3 left Earth just over a month ago aboard a rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Center north of Chennai on July 14.
The Indian spacecraft has taken much longer to reach the moon than NASA’s Apollo missions, which arrived in a matter of days, because the Asian country uses much less powerful rockets.