An Encounter And A Significant Finding By Chandrayaan-3 Moon Mission

The rover of India's moon mission Chandrayaan-3 had an interesting encounter on the lunar surface near its landing site. The Pragyan rover, deployed and commanded by Vikram lander, spotted small rock fragments distributed around the rim, wall slopes, and floor of small craters at the southern high-latitude landing site, according to recent findings.

The rover traversed around 103 meters on the lunar surface in a single lunar day.

The results could prove to be a significant step in lunar exploration as they support the previous studies that suggested gradual coarsening of rock fragments in the interior of lunar regolith.

The 27 kilogram Pragyan rover - that was carried in the underbelly of the Vikram lander - was equipped with cameras and instruments to analyse the lunar soil. It also carried the ISRO logo and the Indian tri-colour to the lunar surface.

As per the findings, the number and size of rock fragments increased when the Pragyan rover navigated approximately 39 metre toward the west of the landing site, Shiv Shakti point - the name given to Chandrayaan-3's landing zone by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A plausible source for the encountered rock fragments could be a nearly 10-metre diameter crater, it said.

The paper, presented earlier this year at the International Conference on Planets, Exoplanets and Habitability in Ahmedabad, proposed that this crater excavated and redistributed the rock fragments around the west of the landing site, which were buried several times by the lunar regolith overturning mechanism, and eventually exposed by the small craters encountered by the Pragyan rover.

Two of the rock fragments indicated evidence of degradation, implying that they have been subjected to space weathering, it said.

Recently, ISRO chief S Somanath told NDTV that with the next moon mission, Chandrayaan-4, the space agency is aiming to bring back a lunar sample to Earth from the 'Shiv Shakti' point

India scripted history on August 23, 2023, with the Chandrayaan-3 mission, becoming the first country to touch down near the lunar south pole; and the fourth in the world to achieve soft-landing on the lunar surface after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.

According to ISRO officials, all the three Chandrayaan-3 mission objectives - demonstration of a safe and soft landing on the lunar surface, and demonstration of the rover roving on the moon and undertaking of in-situ scientific experiments on the lunar surface by its payloads and that of the lander - were achieved.