We are about to plunge into a freezing night of -173 degrees.

India's Pragyan lunar probe has for the first time photographed its 'mother ship' – the Vikram lander – as the two continue their groundbreaking exploration in the Chandrayaan-3 mission.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) released two black-and-white images of Vikram on Wednesday, August 30, showing the Chandrayaan-3 mission lander standing on the dusty surface of the Moon.

"Smile! This morning the Pragyan Rover captured an image of Vikram Lander," ISRO said in a post sharing the images on X (formerly Twitter). "This historic image was captured by the Rover's Navigation Camera (NavCam)."

The first images of the Vikram lunar lander of the Chandrayaan 3 mission on the lunar surface were captured by the mission's Pragyan probe. Source: ISRO

ISRO said the images were taken on Wednesday (August 30) at 7:35 a.m. Indian Standard Time. One of the images, captioned, shows two Vikram scientific sensors deployed on the lunar surface – the Chandra Surface Thermophysics Experiment (ChaSTE) and the Lunar Seismograph (ILSA).

The Chandrayaan-3 mission is halfway through.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission landed on the Moon on Wednesday, August 23rd. One Earth day later, the Pragyan probe moved from the lander, and both began their historic scientific exploration journey.

A week after landing, the mission sent back "Home" a series of images and videos of Pragyan walking on the lunar surface, leaving footprints on the lunar soil.

That is why the image released by ISRO on August 30th is the first image showing the Vikram landing ship through the "eye" of the Pragyan research vessel.

The mission's ChaSTE sensor garnered attention earlier this week for taking temperature measurements on the lunar surface – the first measurements ever taken near the South Pole using a sensor placed directly on the surface rather than from lunar orbit. The device has a probe that drills 10 cm deep into the soft lunar soil to understand how soil temperature changes with depth.

ISRO's analytical images of the Vikram submarine with its advanced sensors. Source: ISRO

Measurements revealed an extremely different temperature gradient at the surface: Just 8 cm from the surface, the soil has a freezing temperature of minus 10 degrees Celsius, while the surface of the Moon has a temperature of 60 degrees Celsius due to sunlight.

According to scientists, the surface of the Moon can become extremely hot during the two weeks of the full moon because the object, unlike Earth, is not protected by a thick atmosphere capable of absorbing the sun's heat.

Previous measurements from spacecraft orbiting the Moon have shown that, particularly around the Moon's equator, temperatures can reach a staggering 127 degrees Celsius during the day and plummet to minus 173 degrees Celsius at night, according to NASA.

For this reason, crewed missions to the Moon must take place at lunar dawn when the Moon is warm enough for humans to work before it gets too hot.

In a separate announcement, ISRO said the Chandrayaan-3 mission had found traces of sulfur in lunar soil. Sulfur had previously been found in small amounts in samples brought to Earth by the Apollo missions in the 1970s, but scientists were unsure of the extent of this mineral's prevalence on the Moon.

Scientists believe that sulfur on the Moon comes from past tectonic activity, and therefore learning more about its abundance could help them better understand the Moon's past.

The Vikram and Pragyan spacecraft will conduct experiments for a total of 14 Earth days (1 lunar day). Chandrayaan-3 is now halfway through its planned journey because neither the probe nor the lander could survive the cold, sunless lunar nights.

The batteries on both solar-powered spacecraft were not powerful enough to sustain the system's operation when temperatures dropped sharply and darkness enveloped the lunar surface.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission was India's first successful attempt to land on the Moon and the world's first successful landing in the south polar region. Previously, only the United States, the former Soviet Union, and China had successfully placed their spacecraft on the lunar surface with controlled landings.

In early 2023, a Japanese landing craft named Hakuto-R crashed after hitting the rim of a crater during landing. Russia's Luna-25 mission met a similar fate just three days before the successful Chandrayaan-3.

India itself previously attempted a lunar landing with the Chandrayaan-2 mission in 2019; although the Chandrayaan-2 lander crashed due to software malfunction, its orbit continues to study the Moon from above.

The southernmost region studied by Chandrayaan-3 is of great interest to scientists because its impact craters are believed to contain a significant amount of frozen water.

Scientists believe this water could be extracted and used to provide drinking water and oxygen for future astronauts, helping to reduce the cost of such missions.

Source: Space

Source: https://www.baogiaothong.vn/buc-anh-lich-su-cua-tau-an-do-tren-mat-trang-sap-chim-vao-dem-lanh-173-do-192230901175149579.htm