Hindus successfully landed the Chandrayan-3 station on the moon: what are they researching

Lander instruments will be able to work from 3 to 6 months

They were the first to do this – they landed a spacecraft on the South Pole of the Moon! Alas, this is not about Russian engineers and scientists (although their offspring Luna-25 was the first to fly to the Moon in a successful scenario), but about their Indian colleagues. Thus, India became the fourth country to make a soft landing on the moon after the Soviet Union, the United States and China.

Recall that it was the Russian LEND apparatus, created at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, that in 2008 discovered a lot of water and other elements in the polar regolith on the Moon, which were brought to our satellite by comets. It was Russian scientists who were the first to formulate the goal – the South Pole of the Moon, as a priority, and began work on preparing the first ever “polar expedition” to the Moon. At one time, Indian scientists only wanted to participate in our project, and then, after numerous postponements of our mission – there were six of them (!), They decided to force this topic on their own.

On the landing module of the Chandrayan-3 mission – Vikrama, a probe for plasma research, a device for studying the thermal conductivity of lunar soil, a seismograph, laser and X-ray spectrometers for determining the elemental composition of lunar rock are installed. The last two devices are installed on the six-wheeled Pragyan lunar rover, which will soon leave the Vikram and begin to drive around the district. He will always be in touch with the “base”, regularly transmitting data to “Vikram”.

By the way, communication with Chandrayaan-3 is generally in order – it is duplicated by its predecessor – Chandrayaan-2 – an orbiter left over from a previous unsuccessful mission (the lander then crashed on the Moon). ISRO did not give in to despair after the failure of 2019, and quickly built a copy according to the old “patterns”.

Chandrayaan-3 launched much earlier than the Russian one – on July 14 (Luna-25 launched on August 11), and the landing was planned only two days later than ours. The longer flight trajectory was, according to ISRO, due to the lack of such a powerful launch vehicle as in Russia, which could bring the device to the Moon faster. The Indian apparatus was controlled mainly by the gravitational forces of the Earth and the Moon.

India, which was considered a developing country for the foreseeable past, now surpasses Russia in terms of gross domestic product, ranking third after China and the United States. Since the early 2000s, it has literally burst into the club of space powers with its satellites and interplanetary stations. The first Indian apparatus, Chandrayaan-1, which the country sent to the moon in 2008, successfully worked in orbit for about a year. It was followed by “Chandrayan-2” and “Chandrayan-3”. The broadcast of the descent of the latter was watched directly from Johannesburg, where the BRICS summit is now taking place, by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He called the mission’s success “the dawn of a new India”.

“At such historic moments, we are very proud. This is the dawn of a new India,” the politician said on Indian television. “I wholeheartedly congratulate ISRO and its scientists on this unprecedented achievement. Even though I am in South Africa, my heart was with the Chandrayan mission. No one has been able to land on this part of the moon before, it will change lunar history.” It is assumed that the instruments of the Indian lander will be able to work on the Moon from 3 to 6 months.