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BENGALURU: On a day India’s photo voltaic satellite tv for pc started its 1.5 million-km journey, the nation’s lunar mission achieved all its aims, paving the way in which for Isro to place the Chandrayaan-3 lander (Vikram) and rover (Pragyan) to sleep on Sunday.Sunday, which is the twelfth day since India achieved the historic soft-landing on the lunar floor, will see each Vikram and Pragyan retire for the evening, Chandrayaan-3 venture director P Veeramuthuvel informed to TOI in an unique interplay.Isro late on Saturday mentioned: “The rover accomplished its assignments. It’s now safely parked and set into Sleep mode. APXS and LIBS payloads are turned off. Information from these payloads is transmitted to the Earth by way of the Lander.”“This implies the command to place the rover to sleep has been enabled and it’ll fall asleep solely Sunday as there are some assessments that have to be completed,” Veeramuthuvel defined.Presently, the battery is totally charged and the photo voltaic panel is oriented to obtain the sunshine on the subsequent dawn anticipated on September 22, 2023. The receiver is stored on. “Hoping for a profitable awakening for one more set of assignments! Else, it is going to eternally keep there as India’s lunar ambassador,” Isro added.On why an early sleep mode on condition that the designed lifetime of the lander and rover have been 14 Earth days, he mentioned: “We can not rely the primary two and final two days. The lunar day started on August 22 and our touchdown was nearly on the finish of the second day. From there, each Vikram and Pragyan have carried out exceptionally to exceed our expectations. All mission aims have been met and we are going to enter sleep mode tomorrow (Sunday).”Why final 2 days do not relyElaborating on why there can’t be operations on the final two days, Veeramuthuvel mentioned there was a necessity for a particular angle of the Solar’s elevation to maintain programs operating.“A full lunar day is from 0° Solar elevation angle to 0° angle. However the mission will not be designed like that. For touchdown, the angle requirement was 6-9° elevation and we managed to land when elevation was 8.75°. For operations, we’d like a minimal of 6° elevation angle as a result of our cameras and different programs are characterised for that. It is also for photo voltaic panels to stay optimum. As soon as it goes beneath 6° elevation, there’s an extended shadow,” he mentioned.Whereas there’s a grace interval for operations to proceed, Isro is opting to start the method of enabling sleep mode sooner than that. “We need to allow the sleep sequence earlier than this grace interval to keep away from any last-minute challenges or hurdles. We would like the lander and rover to enter the sleep mode as flawlessly as they’ve completed every little thing else up to now,” Veeramuthuvel mentioned.Pragyan covers 100mIn its quick life on Moon, Pragyan has accomplished traversing greater than 100 metres as of Saturday, which marked solely the tenth day of its deployment, which occurred early on August 24, a number of hours after Vikram’s soft-landing on August 23.Whereas 14,400 minutes make up 10 days, Pragyan, with a velocity of simply 1cm/second and a bunch of obstacles to beat, has moved for 167 minutes in all nowadays. That’s as a result of given its measurement and design, its motion is very restricted and wishes meticulous planning. It will probably solely transfer round 5 metres in every mobility plan executed by Isro.Pragyan’s operations usually are not totally autonomous and require instructions to be despatched from Earth. In any given mobility plan Pragyan might have solely coated 5-metres given the turnaround time. It has additionally needed to overcome obstacles — it safely negotiated a small crater whose depth was 10cm and averted a much bigger crater with a 4-metre diametre — which might have consumed a number of time. “If we glance particularly on the rover, we’ve managed to cowl greater than 100 metres in simply 10 days, whereas a number of different missions which have lasted longer, even so long as six months, have solely managed 100-120 metres,” Veeramuthuvel mentioned.Science from MoonBetween August 23 and Saturday, each Pragyan and Vikram have despatched a repository of science information, a few of which has been made public by Isro.Pragyan’s Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) and Alpha Particle X-ray Spectroscope (APXS) have confirmed the presence of sulphur, whereas Vikram’s Chandra’s Floor Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) has measured the temperature profile of the lunar topsoil across the pole.One other Vikram payload, the Instrument for the Lunar Seismic Exercise (ILSA) recorded a “pure occasion” that occurred on August 26. Isro is but to substantiate the supply of the occasion. Vikram’s RAMBHA payload has additionally despatched information.
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