Chandrayaan 3’s Pragian spacecraft descends the ramp from the lander to reach the lunar surface
Isro
India’s historic Chandrayaan-3 satellite mission is currently exploring the lunar surface near Antarctica. Regaining momentum after the successful landing, the country is moving forward with plans to send humans into space and a probe to Mars.
4 hours later Indian Space Research Organization The (ISRO) mission landed on August 23, the sun rose over the landing site, Chandrayaan 3 lowered the ramp, and the six wheels landed. Playan Although the probe weighs only 26 kg, tumbled to the moon.
Over the next two weeks, the rover will conduct experiments with alpha particle X-ray spectroscopy to study the composition of the surface and look for water ice that could provide drinking water, oxygen and fuel for future manned bases. is. for spacecraft.
Both the lander and rover are expected to operate for one lunar day (equivalent to 14 Earth days) until sunset reduces their ability to harvest energy from the solar panels. ISRO has not ruled out the possibility of both returning once the sun rises after two weeks of darkness and temperatures dropping to -238°C (-396.4°F), but that would be a bonus.
India has achieved history’s first feat of landing a spacecraft near the moon Antarctic. So far, only China, the United States, and the Soviet Union have made a soft landing on the moon, and no country has explored Antarctica.
The mission was notable not only for its first attempt, but also for its budget. Only 615 million rupees (£59 million).this is less than half adjusted for inflation The 1995 film had a budget of $149 million Apollo 13 It was enough to draw a mission to the moon.
Chandrayaan 3, which means ‘moon ship’ in Sanskrit, took off from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh on July 14 aboard the launch vehicle Mark-III rocket and traveled approximately 380,000 kilometers to the moon in six weeks. Did. .
After a soft landing ISRO said in a tweet 40 days, 3 hours and 29 minutes after launch – Sri M. Sankaran, the director of ISRO’s UR Rao Satellite Center, referred to the previous Chandrayaan-2 mission, which failed in 2019 when a software glitch caused the Vikram lander to crash into the lunar surface. It was destroyed along with a six-wheeled rover on board named Pragyan, which was to explore the lunar south pole.
“Today we have achieved the target we set for 2019,” Sankaran said. “About four years late, but we did it.”
Sankaran added that India is considering pushing forward with its space program, sending humans into space and sending a probe to Mars. A planned mission to monitor the solar atmosphere from the orbit of a Lagrangian point between the Earth and the Sun Aditya-L1is already scheduled to be released on September 2nd.
Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
All planned rover movements have been verified. The rover successfully traversed a distance of about eight meters.
The rover payloads LIBS and APXS are turned on.
All payloads on the propulsion module, landing module, and rover are nominally working.
— Isro (@isro) August 25, 2023
Chandrayaan 3’s success follows a string of failed lunar missions around the world. In April, a Japanese start-up tried privately, but it also crashed into the ground and ended in failure. Russia’s latest attempt at lunar exploration—the first in nearly half a century—also ended in disaster earlier this week.
The Russian Luna 25 lander was supposed to land peacefully, but what was meant to be a brief engine fire to reposition it crashed into the ground at breakneck speed, apparently lasting too long and “disappearing.” ,” said the Russian Space Agency. Published by Roscosmos.
Dimitrios Stroikos A professor at the London School of Economics and Politics said that when ISRO first brought up the idea of India’s lunar exploration program, it was “a bit difficult” to sell it to a skeptical public, but things have changed and public support has been huge. said to have risen to
“Now it’s like, ‘Great, we did this, we need more, what’s next?’ What about human spaceflight?'” Stroikos says. It is highly visible and serves as a normative indicator of a nation’s great power, status, modernity and prestige, but it is also a great scientific feat. [As] As we saw with Luna 25, achieving a soft landing is very difficult. ”
Chandrayaan 3 could leave a lasting imprint on the moon. ISRO did not respond to the interview, but the tread of the rear wheel of the Pragyan has the ISRO logo and Lion Capital of Ashoka or Ashoka Chakra And it will leave a trail of both on the moon’s surface as it traverses at just a centimeter per minute.
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