2023-08-30 06:10:49
The Indian mobile robot has confirmed the presence of sulfur on the surface of the south pole of the Moon on which it landed on August 23, announced the Indian space agency.
“The laser-induced plasma spectrometry instrument, on board the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, has made its first measurements of the elemental composition of the moon’s surface near the south pole,” said in a statement dated Monday. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
“These in situ measurements confirm without ambiguity the presence of sulfur in the region, which was not possible with the instruments on board the satellites”, adds the press release.
They also confirmed the presence of aluminum, calcium, iron, chromium and titanium on the lunar surface, according to ISRO. Other measurements also showed the presence of manganese, silicon and oxygen.
The six-wheeled mobile robot, Pragyan (“wisdom” in Sanskrit), will survey this still poorly mapped area and transmit images and scientific data during the two-week mission.
On August 23, India became the first nation to land a spacecraft near the south pole of the Moon, an unexplored area, and joined the very select club of countries that have successfully carried out a controlled moon landing.
Before India, only the United States, the Soviet Union and China had already managed to carry out such an operation successfully.
A few days before the landing of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the south pole of the Moon, the Russian probe Luna-25 had crashed in the same region.
In 2014, India also became the first Asian nation to place a spacecraft in orbit around the planet Mars. She plans to launch a three-day manned mission around Earth by next year.
A joint mission with Japan is also planned to send a probe to the Moon by 2025 as well as a mission to Venus within two years.
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