The Pragyan Rover is Sleeping on the Moon

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Photo of the Vikram lander, which put the Pragyan rover on the Moon. (ISRO via AP/Alamy)

After a few weeks of work, India’s Pragyan rover on the Moon’s south pole was put to sleep last weekend to sit out the long lunar evening. It accomplished all of its goals, according to a Tweet from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO):

We shall know in a few weeks whether the little lander is ready for more work.

Nature magazine noted some of the findings from the rover’s primary mission, including:

  • ions and electrons swirling near the lunar pole;
  • variations in soil temperature;
  • a moonquake; and
  • presence of sulfur and other elements.

Whatever happens, the Indian rover has been a great success.

India Has Been Busy – It Now Heads for the Sun

Posted on by onespaceman2000

Over the weekend, India launched another important space mission. The mission of the Aditya-L1 spacecraft is to spend four months studying the outer layers of the Sun.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is overseeing the mission, which will come to rest at the L1 Lagrange point from where it will observe the Sun.

For more details on the mission, check out the ISRO website where you can find details about the spacecraft’s objectives and scientific equipment.

This latest mission comes right after India’s successful landing on the Moon, showing all of us that it is not resting on its laurels. The country clearly wants to be in the forefront of the space and science race.

A New Crew Departs for the ISS

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Image (Credit): ISS crew preparing for August 26, 2023 launch. (Terry Renna/AP Photo)

A new crew departed Earth for the International Space Station (ISS) at 3:27am ET today from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The crew includes:

  • NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli,
  • ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen,
  • JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and
  • Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov.

The new crew should be onboard the ISS tomorrow morning, bringing the number of occupants at the station to 11 until 4 crew members return to Earth in a few days.

Russia is probably happy to have attention back on the ISS rather than the Moon for the moment. It has not been a good week for the Russian space program.

You can read more about the new crew members at this NASA site.

A Day in Astronomy: Launch of the Spitzer Space Telescope

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Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the Spitzer Space Telescope. (NASA/JPL)

On this day in 2003, NASA launched the Spitzer Space Telescope to conduct infrared astronomy. Spitzer continued to operate until January of 2020.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) noted some of the triumphs of the space telescope, including:

  • revealing a system of seven Earth-size planets around a star 40 light-years away;
  • creating an unprecedented map of the Milky Way;
  • directly observing light from a planet outside our solar system;
  • directly identifying molecules in the atmospheres of exoplanets; and
  • revealing Saturn’s largest ring.

An impressive list of accomplishments for any telescope.

You can read more about Spitzer at this NASA mission website as well as this JPL website.

Pic of the Week: Another View of the Far Side of the Moon

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Lunar surface as captured by India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft. (ISRO)

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.