Say Cheese! Pragyan Rover shares first photos of Vikram Lander toiling on Moon surface

The Pragyan rover just snapped a picture of the Vikram lander hard at work on the Moon’s surface. This pic is like the superstar of the mission pics, and it was captured by the rover’s Navigation Camera, aka NavCam. The NavCams are one of the most vital components on board the rover and will lead it during the whole mission. They were developed by the smart folks at the Laboratory for Electro-Optics Systems (LEOS) in Bengaluru. These cameras are the real MVPs.

Chandrayaan-3 Mission:

Smile, please📸!

Pragyan Rover clicked an image of Vikram Lander this morning.

The 'image of the mission' was taken by the Navigation Camera onboard the Rover (NavCam).

NavCams for the Chandrayaan-3 Mission are developed by the Laboratory for… pic.twitter.com/Oece2bi6zE

— ISRO (@isro) August 30, 2023

Think of these cameras as the rover’s trusty ’eyes,’ guiding it through all the bumpy and tricky lunar landscapes. They’re like the rover’s GPS, helping it figure out where to go and what to avoid so it can cruise safely on the Moon. ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 has been making some significant strides since it nailed a soft landing on the Moon’s surface on August 23, 2023. With that, India joined an elite club of just four countries that have pulled off this sort of lunar landing. What makes India’s landing even more special, is that it did it at the lunar south pole, a territory that was unexplored up until now. Ever since the soft landing, the Pragyan rover and the Vikram lander, have been hard at work. The rover is like a space detective with its payloads, which include the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and the Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS). These gizmos help it figure out what the Moon is made of by analyzing its dirt and rocks. It has already made some significant discoveries on the surface of the moon. For example, it has discovered traces of sulphur on the lunar surface. Along with sulphur, the rover has also found traces of aluminium, titanium, oxygen, silicon, magnesium and several other minerals, which will be crucial for the development of human colonies on the Moon. The photo of the Vikram lander taken by the Pragyan rover isn’t just a simple social media post. This pic shows how the rover and lander, are working together. The rover is collecting and analysing certain aspects of the moon on its own and is relaying all of that to the lander. The Vikram lander, for its part, is carrying out its own data collection and experiments and then relaying everything it is learning to ISRO’s ground stations. As the rover and the lander continue with their mission, we’re bound to get more pics and data that’ll help us with our understanding of the Moon.