2023-08-08 08:13:57
India, which arrived around the Moon a few days ago, is preparing to land on its surface on August 23. To mark the event, the probe acquired several snapshots of the surface. Although these images are nothing impressive, they remind us that India might become the fourth nation to successfully land on the moon, well before Europe.
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Twenty days following its launch, the lunar probe Chandrayaan-3 arrived in orbit around the Moon and entered it on August 5. To celebrate this event, the probe sent us its first images of the lunar surface, although they have no scientific interest.
This third lunar mission of India aims to make people forget the failure of the previous mission. In September 2019, Chandrayaan-2, with a small rover on board, crashed on the surface of the Moon in a plain between the craters Manzinus C et Simple noat regarding 70 degrees south latitude.
Can India become the fourth nation to land on the Moon?
India aspires to become the fourth nation to land on the Moon following the former USSR, the United States and China, thus beating the Europeans. The Chandrayaan-3 probe aims to land at the South Pole of the Moon on August 23, at 12:17 UTC.
To avoid repeating the previous failure, the causes of which are known, the Indian space agency (Isro) made several modifications to the Chandrayaan-3 lander. This now weighs 1,752 kilos (including the mass of the rover), almost 300 kilos more than that of the Chandrayaan-2 mission. It is fitted with sturdier landing legs, larger solar panels, and has five motors instead of four. Additionally, it carries more fuel and is able to land with a higher impact velocity. Its on-board computer is equipped with new piloting algorithms.
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The Pragyan rover, weighing 26 kilos, will travel aboard the lander. It will be commissioned on the Moon a few days following its arrival on Mars. It will reach the surface of the Moon simply by descending along a ramp from the lander. Equipped with six wheels, the rover will survey around the landing site and send, via Vikram, photos and soil analysis.
Unlike the previous mission, Chandrayaan-3 does not have an orbiter, but a propulsion module. Indeed, since the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter is still in working order, Isro will use it for its communication needs with the Earth.
An ambitious mission to the South Pole
Vikram carries four scientific instruments for studying the thermal properties of the lunar surface, measuring changes in the local gas and plasma environment over time, and measuring seismic activity at the landing site to to delineate the crust and the subterranean mantle. The fourth instrument is a reflector provided by NASA allowing laser ranging. It will be used to verify the distance measurements to the Moon still made by the reflectors left on the Moon during the Apollo program.
As for the Pragyan rover, it carries two spectrometers: a LIBS similar to those on board NASA’s Mars rovers (Curiosity and Perseverance), to determine the chemical and mineralogical composition of the surface, as well as a second spectrometer to determine the composition surface element, focusing on the detection of magnesium, aluminum, silicon, potassium, calcium, titanium and iron.
The mission’s propulsion module has an original instrument that will analyze the Earth’s spectrum to generate data as if it were an exoplanet.
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