The Indian Space Research Organisation shared an image of the Chandrayaan-3 lander taken by the Dual-frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (DFSAR) instrument onboard the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter on September 6, 2023. DFSAR is a key scientific instrument onboard the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter. It employs microwaves in L- and S-band bands. This state-of-the-art instrument offers the best resolution polarimetric images currently on any planetary mission.
Earlier, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured images of Chandrayaan-3's landing site on the lunar south pole region. Chandrayaan-3, the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO's) third lunar exploration mission, softly landed on the Moon's south pole region on August 23, 2023, making India the first country to softly land a spacecraft on the lunar south pole area.
The landing site is located about 600 kilometres from the south pole. In the image shared by NASA, one can see Chandraayan-3's Vikram lander in the centre of the image. The dark shadow of Vikram is visible against a bright halo surrounding the lander. The bright halo was created as a result of the landing module's rocket plume reacting with the fine-grained lunar regolith or lunar soil.
The LRO camera captured an image of the lander four days after Chandrayaan-3 landed on the Moon. On September 5, 2023, ISRO shared an anaglyph of Vikram on the Moon captured by the Navigation Camera onboard the Pragyan rover. Pragyan's camera captured images of Vikram in both left and right directions. Using these images, which are called NavCam Stereo images, ISRO created the anaglyph.
After completing all its assignments, Chandrayaan-3’s Pragyan rover was parked safely and put into “sleep mode”. The Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) payloads onboard Pragyan were turned off the ISRO said in a mission update on September 2, 2023.
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The Vikram lander is transmitting data from the payloads to the Earth. However, the battery of the Pragyan rover is fully charged, and the solar panel has been oriented so that it can receive sunlight when the next lunar sunrise occurs on September 22, 2023. Since the Moon takes about 27 days to complete one rotation on its axis, a lunar day is equal to 14 Earth days. When Chandrayaan-3 landed on the Moon on August 23, lunar sunrise had occurred. Therefore, the next lunar sunrise on the Moon will occur on September 22.
The receiver of the rover has been kept on. ISRO said that it is hoping for a successful awakening of Pragyan so that it can conduct another set of experiments. “Else, it will forever stay there as India's lunar ambassador,” ISRO wrote on X (formerly Twitter).