Chandrauaan 3 Updates
After the successful touchdown of Chandrayaan 3‘s Vikram lander, the Pragyan rover has been effectively deployed near the south pole of the moon. As of now, apart from India’s rover, China’s Yutu 2 rover, sent by Chang’e 4, is the only other active rover on the lunar surface. The current status of China’s Yutu 2 rover, also known as Jade Rabbit in Chinese, has not been extensively shared. However, according to Bloomberg, the rover is reported to be still exploring the lunar surface and it goes into power-down mode during the two-week lunar night when temperatures drop below minus 170°C.
Chandrayaan 3: Approximately how far apart are the Pragyan and Yutu 2 rovers positioned?
On January 3, 2019, Chang’e-4 successfully landed in the Von Karman crater located in the South Pole-Aitkin Basin, making history as the first spacecraft to make a controlled landing on the far side of the Moon. The landing coordinates provided by NASA were 45.4561 S latitude and 177.5885 E longitude. Similarly, the planned landing site for the Vikram lander of Chandrayaan 3, as announced by ISRO, was 69.367621 S and 32.348126 E, and it successfully landed within the intended area.
According to Syed Ahmed, a former scientist at ISRO and NASA who is currently working at XDLINX labs in Hyderabad, the approximate distance between the rovers is 1,948 km. Another space expert, Shanmuga Subramanian, estimates that the distance between the two active rovers on the Moon is around 1,891 km, with a variation of ± 5 km. He also suggests that this might be the first time that two rovers have been sent consecutively to the Moon by humans.
Pragyan Rover is going to meet Yutu 2?
The Indian rover, Pragyan, and the Chinese rover, Yutu 2, are unlikely to come across each other. Pragyan is located near the lunar south pole and can only travel up to 500 meters from its lander, Vikram. On the other hand, Yutu 2 has remained close to its initial landing site. Furthermore, Pragyan’s mission is limited to one lunar day (around 14 Earth days) while Yutu 2 has been operational since early 2019. In the upcoming year, China plans to obtain samples from the moon’s far side through the Chang’e 6 mission, which will be a first-ever accomplishment.
As of July 2023, there are presently six operational lunar orbiters. These consist of NASA’s Artemis P1 and P2 probes, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2, the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), and NASA’s Capstone.
Read More: Chandrayaan-4: A Collaborative Leap into Lunar Exploration by India and Japan
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