India began exploring the moon’s surface with an exploration robot on Thursday, a day after it became the first country to land an unmanned spacecraft near the moon’s south pole.
The Chandrayaan 3 spacecraft prepares to land on the Moon – Photo: ISRO/AFP/NDThe Pragian robot, “wisdom” in Sanskrit, rolled out of its lander just hours after India completed a major milestone in its ambitious low-cost space program, sparking huge euphoria across the country.
The mobile robot “came off the lander and India stepped on the moon,” ISRO (Indian Special Research Organization) reported on Platform X (formerly Twitter).
The day before, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke about the success of the mission on that “historic day”.
A six-wheeled, solar-powered robot will travel across this poorly mapped area of the satellite and relay images and science data over the course of a two-week mission.
Third moon landing mission
Chandrayan, which means “lunar ship” in Sanskrit, landed this Wednesday (23) at 12:34 GMT (9:34 GMT), days after a Russian probe crashed in the same region.
Until this week, only the Soviet Union, the United States and China have succeeded in making a mission to the lunar surface.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission includes the Vikram lander, which means “value” in Sanskrit, and the Pragyan mobile robot.
Launched six weeks ago, Chandrayaan 3 took much longer to reach the moon than the US Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s, which reached the moon in a matter of days.
The arrival of the robot on the moon is a reason to be proud
At the time, India was using less powerful rockets than the United States, so the probe had to circle the Earth several times to gain speed before heading to the Moon.
The country has a cheap aerospace program compared to other powers, but it has grown remarkably since India sent its first spacecraft to orbit the Moon in 2008.
The budget for this mission is 74.6 million US dollars (365 million reais at current prices), which is proof of the cheapest space technology in India.
Experts say low costs are achieved by copying and adapting existing space technologies.
Also taking advantage of the abundance of highly qualified engineers who charge much less than foreign specialists.
Sustainability
The people of India are particularly emotional right now, partly because of the almost five-year wait since the failure of the previous Chandrayaan 2 mission.
Then the module left orbit and began spinning wildly, leaving an indelible image in everyone’s memory: the head of ISRO, emotionally shaken by failure.
Never give up on your plans and goals, no matter how hard your fall, the cry of the head of ISRO in 2019 about the failure of Chandrayaan-2 marked the world, and the joy of the unprecedented landing on the south pole of the moon Chandrayaan-3 too!!! lessons we can learn from India! pic.twitter.com/RX7HRpukvl
– Sakani (Space Today) – AKA Fat Rockets (@SpaceToday1) August 24, 2023
According to the portal R7.
Source: Ndmais