India‘s adorable Chandrayaan-3 rover has been showing off its impressive mobility on the moon’s south pole, more than 200,000 miles from Earth.
Colour footage posted by India’s space agency (ISRO) shows the four-wheeled device performing a 360-degree ‘pirouette’ as it searches for a new path to explore.
The clip was captured by a camera on the larger Chandrayaan-3 parent lander, which carried the rover to the moon in its belly before releasing it last week.
India’s space agency said the rover looks like ‘a child frolicking’ in the yard while its ‘mother’ (the lander) looks on with pride.
Chandrayaan-3 has been on the moon for nine days now and has detected numerous elements in the dusty ground, including sulphur, silicon and oxygen.
The clip was captured by a camera on the larger Chandrayaan-3 parent lander, which carried the rover to the moon in its belly before releasing it not long after touchdown
READ MORE Indian rover confirms sulphur on Moon’s south pole
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) posted this graph to X showing the chemical elements detected by Chandrayaan-3, including sulphur (S)
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India’s space agency, Indian Space Research Organisation or ISRO, posted on X (Twitter): ‘The rover was rotated in search of a safe route. The rotation was captured by a Lander Imager Camera.
‘It feels as though a child is playfully frolicking in the yards of Chandamama, while the mother watches affectionately.’
Chandamama means ‘moon uncle’ in Indian languages and is the name of a popular lullaby sung to children.
Chandrayaan-3 comprises both a stationary lander with long legs (nicknamed ‘Vikram’) and a rover with wheels (‘Pragyan’), but both are equipped with science instruments to study the moon’s surface.
Another post by ISRO on Thursday confirmed the lander had just detected plasma in sparse quantities.
Plasma, often referred to as the fourth state of matter, is ionized gas that contains equal numbers of positive and negative charges.
‘These quantitative measurements potentially assist in mitigating the noise that Lunar plasma introduces into radio wave communication,’ the space agency said.
‘Also, they could contribute to the enhanced designs for upcoming lunar visitors.’
The rover has already detected sulphur in the soil of the lunar south region, which an expert said could reveal more about the origins of our lunar neighbour.
India’s space agency, Indian Space Research Organisation or ISRO, posted on X (Twitter): ‘The rover was rotated in search of a safe route’
ISRO has been regularly tweeting updates about the progress of its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which comprises both a stationary lander and a rover with wheels
It marks the first time sulphur has been found on the moon’s south ‘in situ’ – so in the place it exists, rather than detected from a distance by an orbiter, the country’s space agency said.
Sara Russell, a professor of planetary sciences at the Natural History Museum in London, said discovery has ‘really important implications’ for both researchers and astronauts.
‘Sulphur is usually bonded to important metals like iron and nickel, and these may be important ores that could be used by future astronauts to enable them to live and work on the moon,’ she told MailOnline.
Pragyan the rover was carried to the moon inside the Vikram lander on August 23 – what will surely prove to be one of the most celebrated days in Indian spaceflight history.
Just a day after touchdown on a relatively flat point between Manzinus C and Simpelius N craters, the rover rolled out its parent craft and started to explore.
Since then it’s been sending back amazing photos of the lunar south region, more than 200,000 miles away from Earth.
Earlier this week it shared a beautiful photo taken by the rover of the Vikram parent lander in front of a rugged patch of lunar soil.
One shot shows a 13-foot (4 metre) diameter crater positioned just ahead of the rover, blocking its path, which could have upended the little device had it fallen in.
Fortunately, the rover was commanded to retrace the path and set a new course.
Beautiful: Image provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) taken by the Pragyan rover shows the Vikram lander. Photo released on August 30, 2023
This image provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation shows a crater encountered by Chandrayaan- 3 as seen by the navigation camera
Chandrayaan-3 landed between the southern craters of Manzinus C and Simpelius N. Note the flatness of the area, compared with other nearby areas of the south pole
In the past week, India has captured the world’s attention with its Chandrayaan-3 mission, but it’s already about halfway to being completed.
Science instruments on both the lander and rover will be active for a total of just one lunar day (14 Earth days) before losing power – a relatively short mission.
Once the time period is up, the rover and lander will become inactive on the moon and bring the mission to the end.
Although India is the fourth country after the US, Russia and China to safely land a craft on the moon, it made history as the first to do so on the moon’s south pole.
Chandrayaan-3 safely landed on the moon on August 23 – what will surely prove to be one of the most celebrated days in Indian spaceflight history. Pictured are celebrations on the streets of Ahmedabad the day after
Russia tried to land a spacecraft on the lunar south on August 19 but spectacularly failed when it spun out of control and smashed – leaving the path free for India to seal the achievement instead.
Chandrayaan-3 actually left Earth more than a month ago, aboard a rocket from Satish Dhawan Space Centre north of Chennai on July 14.
It entered lunar orbit on August 5 and the lander (with the rover inside) detached from its propulsion module on August 17.
India’s spacecraft has taken much longer to reach the moon than the Apollo missions, which arrived in a matter of days, because the Asian nation is using much less powerful rockets.
China and US will follow India’s success with their own attempts to land at the moon’s south pole
Along with India and Russia, China and the US are also part of the race to put spacecraft on the moon’s south pole.
Although India has won the race to be the first, the other three nations are expected to become the second to do it later this decade
A view of the moon as viewed by the Chandrayaan-3 lander during Lunar Orbit Insertion on August 5, 2023
China’s Chang’e 7 robotic exploration mission, scheduled for 2026, has the lunar south pole as its destination.
Meanwhile, the US’s Artemis programme run by NASA, not content just with landing an uncrewed robotic gadget at the lunar south, wants to send humans instead.
The Artemis III mission, which will land the first woman and the first person of colour on the moon, is planned for 2025, but NASA recently admitted this could be pushed back.
Russia’s attempt to be the first to land at the south pole – Luna 25 – failed just days before India took the record.
Russia’s mission – a follow-up to Luna 24 back in 1976 – failed when it spun out of control and smashed.
Valery Yegorov, a former researcher with Russia’s space programme who now lives in exile, said the crash would severely affect Roscosmos’s future missions, with the next one not planned until 2028 or ‘even later’.
India has a comparatively low-budget aerospace programme, but one that has grown considerably in size and momentum since it first sent a probe to orbit the moon in 2008 (Chandrayaan-1).
Its Chandrayaan-3 mission has a price tag of $74.6million – far lower than those of other countries, and a testament to India’s frugal space engineering.
Experts say India can keep costs low by copying and adapting existing space technology, and thanks to an abundance of highly skilled engineers who earn a fraction of their foreign counterparts’ wages.
In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to put a satellite into orbit around Mars and is slated to launch a three-day manned mission into Earth’s orbit by next year.
India is also working with the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) on Chandrayaan-4, which would also land at the moon’s south but have a much longer lifespan.
Launch of Chandrayaan-4 is tentatively scheduled for 2025 or 2026.
