The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of the American space agency NASA recently captured a photograph of the lander of Chandrayaan-3, India's third mission to the moon. It is the first spacecraft to successfully touch down near the lunar south pole, and this image was taken by LRO on August 27, just four days after the historic landing on the moon.
Sharing the image on social media platform X, the space agency wrote, "LRO spacecraft recently imaged the Chandrayaan-3 lander on the Moon's surface."
According to NASA, the LRO camera acquired an oblique view (42-degree slew angle) of the lander four days later. The bright halo around the vehicle resulted from the rocket plume interacting with the fine-grained regolith (soil).
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LRO is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.
Meanwhile, the Indian Space Research organisation on Tuesday put out a 3-dimensional 'anaglyph' image of the Chandrayaan-3 Vikram lander from the south pole of the moon.
"The anaglyph presented here is created using NavCam stereo images, which consist of both a left and right image captured onboard the Pragyan Rover," the space agency said on X (formerly Twitter).
Anaglyph is a simple visualization of an object or terrain in three dimensions from stereo or multi-view images.
"In this 3-channel image, the left image is positioned in the red channel, while the right image is placed in the blue and green channels (creating cyan). The difference in perspective between these two images results in the stereo effect, which gives the visual impression of three dimensions. Red and cyan glasses are recommended for viewing in 3D," ISRO stated.
Red and cyan glasses are recommended for viewing in 3D. NavCam was developed by LEOS/ISRO. Data processing is carried out by SAC/ISRO, the space agency added.