“Smile, please!": Vikram lander clicked by Pragyan rover on Moon’s surface

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Aug 30, 2023: Chandrayaan-3’s Pragyan rover clicked an image of Vikram lander on Wednesday morning. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) shared images of the same taken by navigation camera onboard the rover.

 

ISRO has been sharing updates since Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander touched down on the unexplored south pole of the moon on August 23, followed by the ramping out of Pragyan rover.

 

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

In a post on microblogging site X today, ISRO wrote that the image of Vikram lander this morning was clicked by Pragyan rover - 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), ISRO said in the X post with a “Smile, please!"

On Tuesday, ISRO said the Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) instrument onboard Chandrayaan-3’s Pragyan rover, which landed on the moon on August 23, has made the first-ever in-situ measurements on the elemental composition of the lunar surface near the south pole and “unambiguously confirmed the presence of sulphur“.

The preliminary analyses by the Indian space agency also said the instrument detected Aluminum (Al), Sulphur (S), Calcium (Ca), Iron (Fe), Chromium (Cr), and Titanium (Ti), as expected. Further measurements have also revealed the presence of manganese (Mn), silicon (Si), and oxygen (O). Investigation regarding the presence of Hydrogen is currently underway.

India on August 23 scripted history as ISRO’s ambitious third Moon mission Chandrayaan-3’s Lander Module (LM) touched down on the lunar surface, making it only the fourth country to accomplish the feat, and first to reach the uncharted south pole of Earth’s only natural satellite.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday announced the decision to name the spot where Chandrayaan-3 Vikram lander made soft landing as ‘Shiv Shakti Point’ and the site where the Chandrayaan-2 lander crash-landed on the Moon’s surface in 2019 would be known as “Tiranga Point".