The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft accomplished its mission goals on the Moon, but the Vikram lander’s surprising ‘hop experiment’ garnered attention from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), as reported by Hindustan Times. This experiment involved an unplanned return to the lunar surface on command, hinting at new possibilities for future moon missions.
One of the major challenges faced by the ‘Vikram and Pragyan’ duo was reactivating after enduring frigid temperatures as low as -200 degrees Celsius. The hope was that if the onboard instruments survived these extreme lunar conditions, the modules could revive and continue their mission of transmitting lunar data for the subsequent fourteen days.
Upon landing, the Vikram Lander and the Pragyan rover carried out diverse tasks on the lunar surface, including detecting sulfur presence and recording temperature variations. Pragyan traversed more than 100 meters, confirming the existence of sulfur, iron, oxygen, and other elements on the moon.
These lander and rover modules, with a combined mass of 1,752 kg, were designed to function for one lunar day, approximately equivalent to 14 Earth days, to conduct their observations.
Following experiments conducted on the moon from August 23 to September 4, both the rover and lander components of Chandrayaan-3 were placed in a sleep mode to endure the extremely cold conditions at the moon’s south pole.
On September 2, Vikram lander and rover Pragyan were safely parked and switched to sleep mode as the lunar night began. It’s worth noting that one day on the Moon equals 14 Earth days.
India’s Vikram lander had successfully achieved a soft landing near the moon’s south pole on August 23, fulfilling a key objective of the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
