Just last week, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) released a video of the historical Chandrayaan-3’s Pragyan rover crawling out of the Vikram lander’s belly on the Moon’s surface. The video demonstrated how the Chandrayaan-3 rover ramped down from the Lander to the Lunar surface.
Today, the space agency released another video of the Pragyan rover making turns on the Moon’s surface. The agency shared the video via its official X (formerly Twitter) page. According to the space agency, this spectacle highlights the new capabilities of India in its quest to become a developed country.
The Pragyan rover
India became the first nation to land a spacecraft on the unexplored lunar South Pole with the Chandrayaan-3 lander, “Vikram,” which had traveled into space for 40 days. Less than a week after a comparable Russian lander named Luna-25 crashed, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft’s lander module, which included the lander (Vikram) and the 26-kg rover (Pragyan), made a smooth landing close to the south polar region of the moon at 6:04 p.m.
The Sanskrit word Pragyan,” for wisdom,” is used to refer to the rover. It has two sensors for elemental and chemical composition tests as well as a robotic course planning exercise for further exploration. The six-wheeled, solar-powered rover will go over the largely uncharted area and send pictures and data for a total of 14 days.
While moving, the rover will conduct in-depth chemical analyses of the lunar surface. It would use its payload, the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer, to examine the moon’s surface in order to determine its chemical composition and infer its mineralogical composition in order to improve knowledge of the lunar surface. A second payload on Pragyan, the Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS), measures the elemental makeup of the rocks and soil surrounding the lunar landing site.
