Following the historic touch-down of India’s spacecraft close to the moon’s south pole earlier this week, the lunar robot commenced its exploration of the moon on Friday, according to the nation’s intelligence department.
If both hydrogen and oxygen exist on the red planet, it might be possible to find out through the rover’s gathering of information and investigation. The Indian Space Research Organisation has stated that during the course of 14 days, the Chandrayan-3 Rover is going to perform investigations, including a study of the minerals found on the outermost layer of the moon.
A distance of around 8 meters (26.2 feet) has been successfully reached by the rover, according to ISRO’s statement on Friday. “All payloads on the propulsion module, lander component, and rover are operating appropriately.”
Somnath, the executive director of ISRO, said that the rover will also investigate seismic activity and the moon’s environment.
The Press Trust of India media outlet cited India’s Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh as saying that “these experiments would open the way for new scientific research about the availability of oxygen and hydrogen on the surface of the moon and can give us an upfront or inadvertent response as to whether or not there was life on the red planet.”
The rover crawls, or moves at low speed, for safety reasons to minimise shocks and damage to the vehicle on a rough surface and manoeuvring obstacles, according to science journalist and co-author Pallava Bagla, who has also written books on India’s exploration of space. Furthermore, the battery life is not very long. Somnath confirmed on Thursday that the lander had landed approximately in the middle of the geographic region, which had been planned to be 4.5 kilometres (2.8 miles) broad. “It landed about 985 feet (300 metres) from that spot.”
India became the fourth nation in history to accomplish this feat on Wednesday, joining the United States, the Soviet Union, and China after an unsuccessful moon landing mission in 2019 left it lagging.
The mission’s accomplishment highlights the country’s burgeoning stature as a space and technology powerhouse and fits in with the picture that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is attempting to project: a nation on the verge of establishing its position amongst the world’s elite.
The mission, which is expected to be completed and cost $75 million, started more than a month ago. India would make a human lunar expedition and its following endeavour, according to Somnath.
The South Pole area of the celestial body is of interest to several nations and private businesses because its repeatedly shadowing craters may contain frozen water that might aid in upcoming astronaut trips, serve as a potential source of drinking water, or be used for manufacturing fuel for rockets.
India’s achievement comes just days after Russia’s Luna-25, which was aiming for the same lunar region, spiraled into an unmanageable orbit and perished. After an absence of 47 years, it would have marked the return of a successful Russian lunar landing. The failure was attributed by Russia’s chairman of the government-run space enterprise, Roscosmos, to a lack of experience brought on by an interminable lull in lunar research since the last Soviet expedition to the moon in 1976. India has been launching observatories since the 1960s, and in 2014 it triumphantly placed one in orbit above the planet Mars for both itself and other nations. Together with the United States of America, India is preparing to launch its first mission to the International Space Station in 2019.