Chandrayaan-3 captures the moon’s craters in stunning detail

A camera onboard Chandrayaan-3 captures the lunar surface (Image credit: @isro/Twitter)

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has released a new image of the moon which shows its surface in stunning detail. The image was captured by India's third Moon mission spacecraft ‘Chandrayaan-3’ a day after it entered into lunar orbit on August 5.

Taken by the Lander Horizontal Velocity Camera (LHVC) onboard Chandrayaan-3, the image shows areas of the moon like the Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of storms) and craters like Aristarchus and Eddington. Oceanus Procellarum is largest lunar maria that stretches more than 2,500 km on the western edge of the near side of the Moon. Lunar maria are large basaltic plains on the surface of the moon, created by asteroid impacts that triggered volcanic activity.

Chandrayaan-3 Mission: viewed by Lander Imager (LI) Camera on the day of the launch & imaged by Lander Horizontal Velocity Camera (LHVC) a day after the Lunar Orbit Insertion

LI & LHV cameras are developed by SAC & LEOS, respectively https://t.co/tKlKjieQJS… pic.twitter.com/6QISmdsdRS — ISRO (@isro) August 10, 2023

ISRO also shared an image of the earth, as seen from space. The image was taken on July 14 by the Lander Imager camera.

The pictures were shared on Twitter (now called X) on August 10 and have since been viewed over 1.7 million times, collecting 40,000 ‘likes’ on the microblogging platform.

Chandrayaan-3 was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on July 14. It is expected to land on the moon on August 23. This mission will take India into the history books as the fourth nation to successfully execute a soft landing on the moon.

As the mission progresses, a series of maneuvers is being conducted by ISRO to gradually reduce Chandrayaan-3's orbit and position it over the lunar poles.