Chennai, (Asian independent) India’s moon rover has come out of the moon lander and is on the latter’s ramp, said a top official of INSPACe.
“First photo of rover coming out of the lander on the ramp,” Pawan K Goenka, Chairman, INSPACe, the regulator for private players in the space sector, tweeted with the image.
However, ISRO officials were not reachable despite several attempts made by IANS.
The moon lander and the rover are part of the Rs 600 crore Chandrayaan-3 mission. The former landed on the moon safely on Wednesday evening.
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft comprises a propulsion module (weighing 2,148 kg), a lander (1,723.89 kg) and a rover (26 kg).
According to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the moon rover has Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) for deriving the elemental composition in the vicinity of the landing site.
On its part, the lander too will carry out the tasks assigned to it with its payloads: Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) to measure the thermal conductivity and temperature; Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) for measuring the seismicity around the landing site; Langmuir Probe (LP) to estimate the plasma density and its variations. A passive Laser Retroreflector Array from NASA is accommodated for lunar laser ranging studies.
The mission life of the lander and the rover is 1 Lunar day or 14 Earth days, ISRO said.
The propulsion module has Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload to study the spectral and Polari metric measurements of Earth from the lunar orbit.
The life of the payload carried by the propulsion module post ejection of the lander is between three and six months.
