The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has been posting images and videos of its lunar rover on X (formerly Twitter) after the successful soft landing of its Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander on the Moon’s south pole last week. The posts include images of the rover’s departure and its first few meters of driving, as well as images of the rover itself and data from mission instruments.
The first video of the rover, released on Friday, shows it exiting the Chandrayaan-3 lander on a ramp and driving towards the Moon. The ISRO posted the video in a thread that also included images of the lander approaching its landing site and kicking up dust as it touched down on the surface.
the isro wrote later that the rover’s two science instruments had turned on and that it had moved eight meters. On Saturday, ISRO uploaded a new video to X, taken from the lander, of the rover awaymoving almost out of sight of the lander.
India declared objectives for its lunar mission are to successfully land on the Moon and demonstrate that the country can drive its rover on the surface, as well as “conduct on-site science experiments” using instruments on the rover and lander.
Both the lander and the rover are equipped to take measurements of the lunar environment. Using one of the lander’s payloads, called the “Chandra Surface Thermophysical Experiment”, Indian scientists published a graph of lunar surface temperature datacollected with a probe inserted about three inches into the top layer of soil showing drastic changes in temperature between the lunar surface and the soil below.
