Ahead of India’s first National Space Day, which is also the landing anniversary of Chandrayaan-3, ISRO released a new set of images captured by the Vikaram lander and Pragyan rover. The “sneak peek” at some of these images include Pragyan’s first moments on the lunar surface and other stages of the mission.
#ISRO is set to reveal the thousands of images captured by the Vikram Lander and Pragyan Rover on #Chandrayaan3's landing anniversary, i.e. tomorrow!! Here's a sneak peek at some of those images:
[1/3] Images taken by Pragyan's NavCam: (Read alt text for details) pic.twitter.com/8wlbaLwzSX
— ISRO Spaceflight (@ISROSpaceflight) August 22, 2024
ISRO Spaceflight, which provides latest updates from the Indian space agency, said the images are taken by the Lander Imager (LI) and Rover Imager (RI) on Vikram. One of the images captured by the RI camera provides the best visual of Pragyan’s attempts to imprint India’s national emblem on the lunar regolith, said a post on X.
“As we know, this wasn’t very successful as the texture of lunar soil near the South Pole, (where the landing was successfully made) was found to be different than expected,” ISRO Spaceflight said, adding that the “NavCam on Pragyan is a B/W (black-and-white) camera. The cameras on Vikram are colour cameras.”
This comes as data from Chandrayaan-3 mission provided fresh insights into the moon, which is the Earth’s only natural satellite. Based on this, an analysis published in the journal Nature supports the theory that the moon was once covered in an ocean of magma, or a ‘magma ocean’.
The analysis pertained to measurements of the lunar soil, recorded by the Pragyan rover and taken at multiple points along a 100-metre track on the surface.
The rover was deployed by the Vikram lander, which made a soft landing near the south pole of the Moon on August 23, 2023 as part of the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
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