Chandrayaan-3 landing live updates: Rover Pragyan rolls out near Moon’s south pole

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Chandrayaan-3 live updates: With the mission’s success, India has become the first country to land a spacecraft on the lunar’s uncharted territory of south pole and fourth overall to reach the Moon.

Chandrayaan-3’s Pragyan rover has rolled out from the Vikram lander and is onto the lunar surface, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) informed today on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Chandrayaan-3 ROVER: Made in India, Made for the MOON! The Ch-3 Rover ramped down from the Lander and India took a walk on the moon! More updates soon,” the space agency said.

The development comes hours after Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander made a successful soft landing on the south pole of the Moon.

According to ISRO, the mission’s three objectives are to demonstrate a safe and soft landing on the lunar surface, to demonstrate a Rover roving on the Moon and to conduct in-situ scientific experiments. What happens next? Find out here. While Indian space programme gets many compliments for getting such a big bang for its limited budget, frugal innovation will no longer be enough for India to make a difference to global activity on the Moon, C Raja Mohan argues in this piece. Known for storifying myths, writer Devdutt Pattanaik retells some of the myths, stories and legends in this piece about the celestial body that are a part of our cultural truth, our Indian-ness.

What are the main experiments the lander will perform?

📌 The Radio Anatomy of Moon Bound Hypersensitive ionosphere and Atmosphere (RAMBHA) will study the electrons and ions near the surface of the moon and how they change over time.

📌 The Chandra’s Surface Thermo physical Experiment (ChaSTE) will study the thermal properties of the lunar surface near the polar region. Chandrayaan-3 has landed around 70 degree south latitude, the closest that any spacecraft has reached to the lunar south pole.

📌 The Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) will measure the lunar quakes near the landing site and study the composition of the Moon’s crust and mantle.

📌 The LASER Retroreflector Array (LRA) is a passive experiment sent by NASA that acts as a target for lasers for very accurate measurements for future missions.

📌 There are two scientific experiments on the rover.

📌 The LASER Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) will determine the chemical and mineral composition of the lunar surface.

📌 The Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) will determine the composition of elements such as magnesium, aluminium, silicon, potassium, calcium, titanium, and iron in the lunar soil and rocks.