'Smile, please': ISRO shares an image of Vikram lander on lunar surface taken by Pragyan rover

Chandrayaan-3 mission's Pragyan rover clicks an image of Vikram lander on lunar surface

ISRO shared the ‘image of the mission’ on social media with the caption “Smile, please.” The social media post also said,” Pragyan rover clicked the image of Vikram lander this morning.”

Pragyan rover is equipped with Navigation Camera developed by the Laboratory for Electro-Optics Systems (LEOS) unit of ISRO.

The image of lander shared by the Bengaluru headquarters of the national space agency shows the deployment of the Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) and Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA).

ChaSTE measures temperature profile of the lunar topsoil around the pole, to understand the thermal behaviour of the Moon’s surface. It has a temperature probe that works on controlled penetration mechanism, reaching up to 10 cm beneath the surface.  ILSA, on the other hand, measures the seismicity near the landing site.

These are two out of four payloads on the Pragyan rover that will conduct in-situ experiments for the tenure of the mission.

ISRO had recently released first observations from the ChaSTE payload with a graph illustrating the temperature variations of the lunar surface/near-surface at various depths

Pragyan had also confirmed the presence of Sulphur (S) in the region as the Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument onboard the rover on August 29.

“These in-situ measurements confirm the presence of Sulphur (S) in the region unambiguously, something that was not feasible by the instruments onboard the orbiters,” ISRO said.

After the soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 mission, ISRO has said two of the three Chandrayaan-3 mission objectives — demonstration of a safe and soft landing on the lunar surface, and demonstration of rover movement on the moon — have been achieved, while the third — in-situ scientific experiments — are underway.