Key Takeaways
- The Chandrayaan-3 Mission successfully landed the Vikram Lander and deployed the Pragyan Rover on the Moon’s South Polar Region.
- The Rover’s Navigation Camera (NavCam) captured the first image of the Vikram Lander on the lunar surface.
- Onboard instruments like LIBS detected chemical elements such as aluminium, sulphur, calcium, iron, chromium and titanium.
Chennai: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Wednesday released pictures of Vikram Lander clicked by Pragyan Rover upon landing in the South Polar Region of the Moon.
The image was taken by the Navigation Camera onboard the Rover (NavCam). ISRO posted in X “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)”, it said.
NavCams for the Chandrayaan-3 Mission are developed by the Laboratory for Electro-Optics Systems (LEOS).
After getting separated from the Propulsion Module, the Vikram Lander successfully landed on the Moon’s surface and deployed the Rover.
The Rover has started conducting in situ experiments on the South pole. LEOS also developed the Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument onboard the Chandrayaan-3 Rover, which made the first ever in‑situ measurements of the lunar surface’s elemental composition near the south pole.
In a significant breakthrough, the payloads Rover found presence of several chemical substances including aluminium, sulphur, calcium, iron, chromium and titanium on the south polar region of the moon and the search is on for finding Hydrogen.
This is the first major revelation captured by the cameras carried by the Rover, which was deployed on August 23 on the lunar surface, by the Lander Module on board the spacecraft.
