On August 23, India achieved a huge success when it successfully landed a spacecraft on the lunar surface as part of the Chandrayaan-3 mission. It became the fourth nation to reach the Moon, but more importantly, it became the first nation to land on the Moon's south pole (and even measure its temperature).
The Chandrayaan-3 mission consists of a lander named Vikram and a research rover named Pragyan. From the moment of landing, the rover began exploring the surface, utilizing onboard cameras that send images and videos of the area back to Earth.
On Saturday, August 26, scientists from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) showed a video on X, with the Pragyan rover orbiting around the landing site, which was named Shiv Shakti Point.
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Shortly afterwards, ISRO reported that the Chandrayaan-3 mission had begun conducting scientific experiments in the area.
On Sunday, August 27, there was another announcement on X regarding one of Chandrayaan-3's payloads called the ChaSTE experiment, or Chandra's Surface Thermophysical Experiment.
The purpose of this experiment is to use a temperature sensor as well as 10 individual sensors to profiles temperature of the lunar south pole soil. By analyzing this data, scientists will be able to understand the thermal behavior of the lunar surface.
In fact, ChaSTE has already found some things. It has detected different surface temperatures of the moon at different depths, and has created “thefirst such profile for the lunar south pole.”
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According to the Indian space agency, detailed observations on this front are still underway and we expect other interesting findings.
The success of India's Chandrayaan-3 mission with the landing on the Moon and the deployment of the Pragyan rover at the Moon's south pole is very significant, and this is because there are difficulties in the area, such as a large crater that the rover encountered. Although everyone wants to reach the lunar south pole - because it is believed that there may be water in the form of ice - landing there is difficult because the area is covered with large craters.
Just about 3 meters from its location on Sunday, the rover spotted a crater that appeared to be about 4 meters wide. “The rover has been instructed to change path,” ISRO posted on X, “It is now safely heading to a new path.”
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The Chandrayaan-3 mission is expected to make a significant contribution to the understanding of the moon, especially the south pole, which is the priority area for the next space exploration. With further exploitation of the data collected by the mission's research instruments , important discoveries are expected that will broaden our understanding of lunar geology and could shed light on the origin and evolution of the moon.
Source: www.space.com
