Rover Pragyan travels 8 metres on moon: Latest from Chandrayaan 3

Pragyan Rover has travelled 8 metres on the surface of the moon since it rolled out of lander Vikram. Isro confirmed all planned rover movements have been verified and Pragyan’s payloads which will carry out the experiments are turned on. All payloads on the propulsion module, lander module, and rover are performing nominally.

As rover Pragyan is now walking on the lunar surface coming out of the Vikram lander, Isro in a newly released video shared the mechanisms which helped Pragyan roll out from Vikram’s belly soon after Chandrayaan 3 soft landed on the south pole of the moon on August 23.

There were 26 deployment mechanisms behind Pragyan rover’s smooth roll down, all developed at Isro headquarters in Bengaluru. One of the most crucial of them was a solar panel which generated power for Pragyan before it rolled out. “A two-segment ramp facilitated the roll-down of the rover. A solar panel enabled the rover to generate power,” Isro said in a fresh tweet.

Early in the day, Isro shared a video of the Pragyan rover rolling out of Chandrayaan 3 with the Indian National Flag visible in the video.

From August 23, Pragyan now has 14 earth days — equivalent to one lunar day– to carry out experiments on the lunar soil.

However, Isro hopes that the lander and the rover will come back to life when the sun rises on the moon again.

This is the first time that information on the moon’s south pole will come in front of the world as India became the first country to soft land on the south pole of the moon. Isro chief S Somnath said the south pole was chosen for the mission as it has some advantages because it is less illuminated by the sun.

The South Pole of the moon may have the potential to be colonised by the humans. “Scientists who are working on the moon showed a lot of interest in the south pole because ultimately human beings want to go & create colonies and then travel beyond. So, the best place is something we are looking for and the South Pole has the potential to be that,” Isro chief said.