- Tuesday, February 25, 2025
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft made a historic landing on the moon’s uncharted south pole on August 23.
By: Shubham Ghosh
PRAGYAN, the rover of Chandrayaan-3 which successfully landed on the surface of the moon’s south pole on August 23 creating history, on Wednesday (30) shared an image of Vikram — the lander. It is the first image that it has clicked using its navigation camera and since landing on the moon.
Till now, all the photographs and videos have been captured by Vikram.
Sharing the picture, the Indian Space Research Organisation said, “Smile, please?! Pragyan Rover clicked an image of Vikram Lander this morning. The ‘image of the mission’ was taken by the Navigation Camera onboard the Rover (NavCam). NavCams for the Chandrayaan-3 Mission are developed by the Laboratory for Electro-Optics Systems (LEOS).”
LEOS is based in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru, where the ISRO is headquartered.
Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
Smile, please?!
Pragyan Rover clicked an image of Vikram Lander this morning.
The 'image of the mission' was taken by the Navigation Camera onboard the Rover (NavCam).
NavCams for the Chandrayaan-3 Mission are developed by the Laboratory for… pic.twitter.com/Oece2bi6zE
— ISRO (@isro) August 30, 2023
A week ago, India became the fourth country in the world to accomplish a successful landing on the natural satellite and the first to do so on the uncharted south pole.
The new photograph also comes a day after Pragyan discovered sulphur near the moon’s south pole. According to the Indian space agency, the rover also detected aluminium, iron, chromium, iron, manganese, silicon as well as oxygen.
“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.
On August 18, ISRO said in a message: “Thanks for the ride, mate!” after the lander successfully separated from the propulsion module.
