India receives first temperature data from the surface of the moon

The Pragyan lunar rover, which was delivered to the moon by the lander of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, transmitted to Earth the first scientific data on the temperature of the lunar surface. This was reported by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on X (formerly Twitter).

ChaSTE (Chandra Surface Thermophysical Experiment) measures the temperature of the upper layer of lunar soil around the pole to understand the temperature regime on the lunar surface. ISRO explained that the device is equipped with a mechanism that can measure the temperature of the lunar soil at a depth of up to 10 cm.

In addition, ISRO obtained the first profile of the south pole of the moon, which captures the temperature changes in the surface of the Earth’s satellite at different depths.

Space Agency Senior Scientist Bee Darukesha in a commentary to the Press Trust of India expressed surprise at the high temperature recorded on the surface of the moon. “We all thought that the surface temperature could be 20 to 30 degrees Celsius, but it is 70 degrees Celsius. This is surprisingly higher than we expected,” he said.

On August 23, the landing module of the Indian lunar station Chandrayaan-3 successfully committed soft landing at the south pole of the moon. The mission launched on July 14, when the LVM-3 launch vehicle carrying the vehicle lifted off from the country’s main spaceport in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. On August 5, the Chandrayaan-3 station entered the lunar orbit, which was the third successful entry into the orbit of an Earth satellite in the history of the country.

With the landing of the module at the south pole of the moon, India became the fourth country in the world to achieve a soft landing on the Earth’s satellite – after the USSR, the USA and China, and the first to land the module at the south pole.

The Russian station Luna-25, launched earlier this month, suffered crash on August 19 – preliminary due to the fact that its propulsion system, when trying to go into pre-landing orbit, worked for 127 seconds instead of 84.