Well it moon walked after slowly rolling down on the moon lander’s ramp, said the Indian space agency.
Moon walk is a dance move that became very popular after Michael Jackson did that during the performance of Bille Jean on ‘Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever’.
The lander – part of the Chanrayaan-3 spacecraft- had landed safely near the moon’s south pole on Wednesday in a text book style.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said: “Chandrayaan-3 ROVER: Made in India Made for the MOON! The Ch-3 Rover ramped down from the Lander and India took a walk on the moon!”
While the rover did its moon walk on Thursday, ISRO released the much awaited video on Friday.
On the video, taken by the camera on the lander – India’s first lunar selfie- the rover with its solar panel deployed can be seen slowly going down the ramp, touching the moon soil and moving forward.
One can also see the rover’s wheel imprint on the lunar soil as well as the shadow of the rover with solar panel.
ISRO posted: “Lander Module payloads ILSA, RAMBHA and ChaSTE are turned ON today (Thursday). Rover mobility operations have commenced. All activities are on schedule. All systems are normal.”
According to the space agency, on Sunday, the propulsion module payload SHAPE was turned on..
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft comprises a propulsion module (weighing 2,148 kg), a lander (1,723.89 kg) and a rover (26 kg).
With the landing, a major portion of the Rs 600 crore Chandrayaan-3 mission has been realised.
The remaining portion is the moon rover rolling down from the lander, moving around and doing the programmed experiments.
According to ISRO, the moon rover has Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) for deriving the elemental composition in the vicinity of the landing site.
On its part, the lander too will carry out the tasks assigned to it with its payloads: Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) to measure the thermal conductivity and temperature; Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) for measuring the seismicity around the landing site; RAMBHA Langmuir Probe (LP) to estimate the plasma density and its variations. A passive Laser Retroreflector Array from NASA is accommodated for lunar laser ranging studies.
The mission life of the lander and the rover is 1 Lunar day or 14 Earth days, ISRO said
“The rover rolled down onto the moon surface from the lander sometime around 12.30 a.m. Thursday. It is moving around. It is leaving its imprint on the moon’s surface,” Dr S. Unnikrishnan Nair, Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) told IANS.
The logo of ISRO and the national emblem have been engraved on the wheels of the rover to leave the imprint when it moves around.
Unnikrishnan said the rover will collect samples of the moon and do the experiments and send the data to the lander.
(Venkatachari Jagannathan can be reached at v.jagannathan@ians.in)
–IANS
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