This week’s image is an shot of the far side of the Moon captured by India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which landed on the Moon yesterday. This was part of a set of photos posted to Twitter by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). The various images were used by the spacecraft as it attempted to find a safe landing spot, which it fortunately found.
Now that is a clear message from S. Somanath, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft landed on the lunar surface at 8:34 am ET today.
India is now the fourth nation to land on the moon, not that other nations haven’t tried.
This victory is all the sweeter following Russia’s loss of the Luna-25 spacecraft. We needed some good news this week.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson stated:
Congratulations ISRO on your successful Chandrayaan-3 lunar South Pole landing! And congratulations to India on being the 4th country to successfully soft-land a spacecraft on the Moon. We’re glad to be your partner on this mission!
NASA provided the mission with a passive laser retroreflector array for lunar ranging studies.
The mission rover (shown below) should be moving about south pole soon enough to start its experiments in the vicinity.
You can learn more about the mission and equipment at this ISRO site.
We are down to one spacecraft approaching the Moon’s south pole – India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, which is expected to land as early as tomorrow. This is India’s second try for a Moon landing after the loss of Chandrayaan-2, so fingers crossed. Chandrayaan-1 also sent a probe that impacted the Moon, but that was the plan.
We shall see if Indian patience beats Russian bravado.
India Prime Minister Modi put a possible spin on the past missions. Regarding Chandrayaan-1, he said:
Chandrayaan-1 is considered to be a path-breaker among global lunar missions as it confirmed the presence of water molecules on the moon. It featured in over 200 scientific publications around the world.
Even the failed second mission has its successes:
Chandrayaan-2 was equally pathbreaking because data from the Orbiter associated with it detected the presence of chromium, manganese and sodium for the first time through remote sensing. This will also provide more insights into the moon’s magmatic evolution. The key scientific outcomes from Chandrayaan 2 include the first ever global map for lunar sodium, enhancing knowledge on crater size distribution, unambiguous detection of lunar surface water ice with IIRS instrument and more. This Mission has featured in almost 50 publications.
I like the positive attitude.
The message from Roscosmos was pretty bland:
During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters.
Translated into normal speech, we learned that Luna-25 crashed during its attempted landing on the lunar surface.
This is a blow for Russia and Putin as well. The Soviet Union could threaten the world and run a terrific space program. The Russians are bogged down in Ukraine and unable to pick up a lunar program ceased about 50 years ago. It is sad to watch.
Roscosmos Director General Yury Borisov blamed the crash on Russia’s long absence from the Moon, stating,
The negative experience of interrupting the lunar program for almost 50 years is the main reason for the failures.
He may want to add corruption, economic sanctions, and horrible leadership to that list of reasons.
At least the Russian mission was able to share a few photos from orbit before it all ended.
The Moon’s south pole is still available for anyone who wants it. The Indian space program will give it a try this week. We can only wish them well as they fly over the Russian rubble.
On this day in 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 2 space probe from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida to study the solar system’s outer planets as well as interstellar space beyond the Sun’s heliosphere.
The Voyager 2 space probe is still talking to us as it continues its journey beyond the planets with a special message for anyone it may encounter.
During its initial mission, the space probe provided us with many images from an little known region of our solar system, including the image below of Jupiter’s moon Europa.
Our Awesome Universe 