Chandrayaan 2 orbiter spots Chandrayaan 3 lander on Moon, ISRO releases pics

Chandrayaan 3 lander was spotted on the Moon by the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter using its high-resolution camera, Isro said on Friday while sharing the photographs on social media.

While the lander of Chandrayaan 2 crash-landed on the Moon in 2019, its orbiter has been gathering important data for the past four years.

Hours after the ‘Vikram’ lander of the Chandrayaan 3 mission successfully made a soft landing on the lunar surface, the orbiter of Isro’s previous Moon mission captured the spacecraft on its camera, which has the best resolution anyone currently has around the moon.

“I spy you! 🙂” Isro posted on X. “Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter 📸photoshoots Chandrayaan-3 Lander!”

“Chandrayaan-2’s Orbiter High-Resolution Camera (OHRC), — the camera with the best resolution anyone currently has around the moon – spots Chandrayaan-3 Lander after the landing on 23/2³/23,” it added.

India scripted history on Wednesday as the Vikram lander, with Pragyan rover in its belly, touched down on the Moon’s surface, becoming the only the fourth country to achieve this feat, and the first to reach the uncharted south pole of Earth’s only natural satellite.

The Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO) earlier said all the Lander Module(LM) payloads have been turned on.

“All activities are on schedule. All systems are normal. Lander Module payloads ILSA, RAMBHA and ChaSTE are turned ON today. Rover mobility operations have commenced. SHAPE payload on the Propulsion Module was turned ON on Sunday,” it said in a post on X while giving an update in the evening.

ISRO chairman S Somanath said the rover movement is working “very well”.

“The lander landed perfectly on the intended site. The landing location was marked as 4.5 km x 2.5 km — I think on that space, and the exact centre of that was identified as the location of landing. It landed within 300 metres of that point. That means it is well within the area identified for landing,” Somanath told PTI.