The Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-3, which reached its surface Historic decline A new study reveals that a moon near the lunar south pole last August barely ejected any lunar dust during landing thanks to the unique configuration of the engines. As a result, its cameras had a clear view of the landing area during the critical minutes before landing, and thus captured images that helped the spacecraft avoid dangerous craters and eventually land safely.
“When you turn [to the south pole]“Scientifically interesting areas are always dangerous areas,” said Suresh K, a scientist at the Space Applications Center (SAC), a research institution of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in Gujarat, India.
Speaking on Monday (March 11) at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LSPC), being held this week in Texas, K shared with scientists before and after landing images from the mission, which worked on the moon for two weeks. before Surrendering, as expected, to the frigid lunar temperatures.
Related: India's Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander released a 'halo' of dust that can be seen from space
During landing, spacecraft turn on their engines to reduce their speed in preparation for a soft landing. The exhaust from these engines then hits the moon's surface, which typically explodes its powder-like regolith into a large plume thanks to the moon's low gravity and lack of atmosphere.
However, cameras aboard the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft detected the resulting dust plume starting just 59 feet (18 meters) above the moon's surface. This represents the smallest amount of moon dust ever recorded during a lunar landing between missions including NASA's Apollo missions and China's Chang'e-3 endeavours, K said.
He and his colleagues analyzed pre- and post-landing images of the landing zone taken by the Vikram (Sanskrit for “courageous”) lander, as well as by a high-resolution camera mounted on the vehicle. Chandrayaan-2 The orbiter, which has continued to orbit the Moon since the lander duo Crashed during landing In 2019, dust from Vikram's landing settled in an area of about 1,561 square feet (145 square metres) around the lander, as confirmed by a camera aboard the rover Pragyan (Sanskrit for “wisdom”). This is higher than Previous estimates It has an area of 1,167 square feet (108 square metres), meaning the spacecraft would have dislodged more than 4,500 pounds (2 metric tons) of lunar regolith.
presentation New results At LPSC on Monday, K attributed the interesting short dust plume to the lack of a central engine on the spacecraft, which resulted in low engine thrust during descent. The “hard braking phase” began in an orbit 18.6 miles (30 km) above the lunar surface, and when the spacecraft reached an altitude of 0.4 miles (0.8 km) above the target landing zone, it turned off two of its four 800-N engines as the two diagonal engines They worked all the way until landing. K said the mission used “the least powerful engine yet.” “We noticed less turbulence on the surface.”
In addition to the diagonal position of the operating engines, the height of the shaft was affected by the mass of the spacecraft as well as the local properties of the regolith. The Chandrayaan-3 mission team is still analyzing data on this front and expects to publish it within two months, K told scientists at the LPSC on Monday.
Vikram and Pragyan achieved many milestones during their two weeks of work at the landing site, which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called “the site.” Shiv Shakti Point (Sanskrit for “Shiva” and “Power” respectively). The name has not yet been approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the organization responsible for officially naming celestial objects and their characteristics.
By lunar nightfall, the Pragyan spacecraft had traveled 331 feet (101 metres) on the moon's surface, detected sulfur on the moon, and was redirected after encountering a potentially deadly crater and taking samples of lunar regolith in seven or so, director Pratim Das said. Eight sites. From ISRO's Science Program Office in Bengaluru.
The seismometer aboard Vikram also sensed several “natural events” on the Moon, including… Moonquakes He said that the effects of micrometeorites are still being analyzed. For the first time, a thermal probe aboard the Moon has dove down about 4 inches (10 centimeters) to the surface, capturing the temperature of lunar soil at different depths.
With the Chandrayaan-3 mission now in the rearview, India is planning its next lunar mission, Chandrayaan-4, which is tentatively scheduled to launch in 2028 and aims to… Bring the moon rocks to ground. Modi had earlier said the country should do so Aim for astronaut status on the Moon by 2040, but neither ISRO nor its partner institutions have shared details on how they plan to achieve this vision.
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