By 
August 25th, 2023
Pre-launch checkout of India’s lunar rover.
Image credit: ISRO
India’s Chandrayaan-3 Moon lander-deployed rover departed its ramp and has begun exploring the lunar surface. The plan calls for the wheeled rover to carry out investigation of the south pole region touchdown area for over 14 days.
From ISRO: “All activities are on schedule. All systems are normal.”
“All planned rover movements have been verified. The rover has successfully traversed a distance of about [26 feet] 8 meters.”
A number of lander payloads have been turned on and rover mobility operations have commenced, ISRO has announced.
Image credit: ISRO/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Also, onboard the Chandrayaan-3 mission’s Propulsion Module, orbiting the Moon, the SHAPE payload is in operating mode, ISRO said.
SHAPE stands for the Spectro-polarimetry of HAbitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) experiment.
“Future discoveries of smaller planets in reflected light would allow us to probe into variety of exo-planets which would qualify for habitability (or for presence of life),” ISRO explains.
The SHAPE payload carried on the Moon-circuiting Propulsion Module is to perform spectroscopic study of the Earth’s atmosphere and also measure the variations in polarization from the clouds on Earth.
Video of the Chandrayaan-3 rover rolling onto the lunar surface is available at:
Image credit: ISRO
Image credit: ISRO
Posted in Space News
