India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander efficiently ‘hops’ on the moon

Sep 04, 2023 at 4:53 PM
India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander efficiently ‘hops’ on the moon

Not content material with making historical past by reaching the lunar floor’s south pole, India’s moon lander has proven off by hopping to a second gentle touchdown.

Vikram touched down last month and deployed a number of bits of kit to collect details about the terrain of the moon, mainly a 26kg rover to gather rock samples and pictures.

The important goal is to verify the presence of water ice within the south pole’s shadowed craters. If current, it could possibly be used for consuming water, gasoline, and oxygen – doubtlessly supporting a everlasting human base.

While the rover, named Pragyan, continued to roam the floor, India‘s house company revealed on Monday morning Vikram had efficiently carried out a second gentle touchdown by way of a “hop experiment”.

It solely reached an altitude of 40cm, and moved between 30cm and 40cm, however the check was stated to be a very good signal for future missions that might take people to the moon and again.

“All systems performed nominally and are healthy,” stated house company ISRO.

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Before the soar, the equipment Vikram had deployed – together with a seismometer and probe used to dig into the floor – was introduced again inside and the ramp used to deploy Pragyan was folded up.

Everything was redeployed when the lander touched again down.

Pragyan, which has travelled greater than 100 metres from the lander’s preliminary landing, has now been parked and put into sleep mode till the moon’s subsequent dawn.

It’s hoped it might sit back into life when gentle reaches it once more on 22 September.

So far, it has confirmed the presence of sulphur and a number of other different parts, together with aluminium, iron, calcium, chromium, titanium, manganese, oxygen and silicon.

Relive India’s historic moon landing as it happened

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Watch India’s rover contact moon floor

August’s touchdown was a milestone in house exploration, as no country – the US, China, or Russia – had managed to reach the moon’s south pole before.

The mission, named Chandrayaan-3, got here after a earlier failed try by India in 2019 and one by Moscow’s Roscosmos space agency just last month.

India has since additionally launched its first mission to study the sun.