NEW DELHI, 23 Aug India is the first country in the world to successfully land a spacecraft near the south pole of the moon, broadcast on the YouTube channel of the Indian Space Research Organization.
The automatic station «Chandrayan-3» was launched on July 14, it entered the lunar orbit on August 5. The vehicle performed several lunar rendezvous maneuvers until its orbit dropped to 100 kilometers from the surface.
The Vikram lander separated on August 17 and performed two descents.
It is expected that the payload of the lunar rover will provide breakthrough knowledge about the elemental composition of the lunar surface. An X-ray alpha-particle spectrometer and a laser-guided spectroscope are installed on the apparatus. Detectors are also installed on the Vikram descent module.
ChaSTE (Chandra Ground Thermal Experiment), one of the useful modules of the descent vehicle, is designed to measure the thermal properties of the lunar surface near the polar region.
The descent vehicle also carries the Rambha-Langmuir probe, which will measure the plasma (ions, electrons) around the landing site during one lunar day (14 Earth days), and an instrument for determining lunar seismic activity, which will provide new information about lunar earthquakes and micrometeorites.