India has just made history by becoming the first country to successfully land a spacecraft very close to south pole of the moon. It was a very close race with Russia as their respective space agencies sent their ships almost on par. ROSCOSMOS, the Russian space agency, was somewhat ahead, but its failed moon landing cleared the way for India, which seized the opportunity with its Chandrayaan-3 mission.
After the failure of the Chandrayaan-2 project in September 2019This time the moon landing was successful. The maneuver lasted several days as the ship was in lunar orbit. from August 5. It has since fired up an additional thruster to move into a more closed loop, which allowed the Vikram lander to separate from the propulsion module. Then, last weekend, he launched into an elliptical orbit to get closer to the target. 25 km from the surface of the moon. Only the last step, taken today, remains.
with an exhaustive monitoring scientists Chandrayaan-3 and cameras that looked for dangers on the surface in real time, managed to make a safe controlled descent on the plain without craters and rocks that could interfere with the landing on the moon. It was a big step in India’s space race, but it has only just begun. The mission still has a lot of work to do.
Why did India make history?
so far only USA, Soviet Union and China they managed to land probes on the moon. But they all did so in the area closest to the satellite’s north pole. Thus, the south pole is still a completely unexplored region.
Yes, there have been missions to study it from lunar orbit. This is the case NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. In fact, thanks to him, scientists have data that made it necessary to search for a landing in this region of the moon.
There are many more shaded areas here than in the northern part, so it is to be expected that there will be ice water craters, something that could make it easier to build a moon base there in the future. In addition, the south pole is on the edge of a massive impact crater. This is one of the oldest objects in the solar system, so it can contain a lot of information about its origin.
There are many reasons to try to land in this region of the Moon. But before the arrival of Chandrayaan-3, no country had been successful. This is a real achievement of India, a country that, with the help of its orbiter Chandrayan-1was the first country to report the possible presence of frozen water on a satellite.
The future of Chandrayaan-3 on the Moon
The first thing Chandrayaan-3 will do is free itself. Pragyana small rover that will analyze the chemical composition of the lunar surface.
But, in addition, the ship carries a number of instruments that will be responsible for measuring thermal conductivity and temperature, and two probesone for measuring plasma density and the other capable of analyze seismic activity.
All this will help us to get a much better idea of what is under the south pole of the moon, have an idea of how our planetary system was born and, perhaps, finally find that precious frozen water that is suspected to be hiding in the bowels of the moon. shadows. .
Source: Hiper Textual
