Chandrayaan-3 lander is in the centre of the image. Its dark shadow is visible against the bright halo surrounding the vehicle. The image is 1,738 meters wide; frame No. M1447750764LR.
| Photo Credit: LROC

National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has spotted the Chandrayaan-3 Lander Module landing site on the surface of the Moon, and captured its picture.

NASA stated: “The ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) Chandrayaan-3 touched down on the Moon on August 23, 2023. The Chandrayaan-3 landing site is located about 600 kilometres from the South Pole of the Moon. The LROC (short for LRO Camera) acquired an oblique view (42-degree slew angle) of the lander four days later. The bright halo around the vehicle resulted from the rocket plume interacting with the fine-grained regolith (soil).

The US Space agency added that the LRO is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. Arizona State University manages and operates LROC.

Launched on June 18, 2009, LRO has collected a treasure trove of data with its seven powerful instruments, making an invaluable contribution to our knowledge about the Moon.

A few days ago, the LRO captured an image of a new crater on the surface of the Moon that is likely the impact site of Luna 25 mission of Russia.

The Luna 25 suffered a glitch due to which it crashed on the lunar surface on August 19.

ISRO has put the lander Vikram and rover Pragyan, which has a mission life of one lunar day (14 earth days), into sleep mode.

The ISRO said that Vikram would fall asleep next to Pragyan once the solar power was depleted and the battery was drained.

The ISRO is hoping that it will wake up both Vikram and Pragyan on September 22.

Prior to putting it to sleep, the lander successfully underwent a hop experiment and on command, it fired the engines, elevated itself by about 40 cm as expected and landed safely at a distance of 30–40 cm away.