Watch India’s lunar rover take a spin on the Moon

By wazup on August 31, 2023 Comments Closed / 82 views

New Chandrayaan-3 mission footage shows India’s rover doing a quick 360 on the Moon’s south pole.

By Umar Shakir, a news writer fond of the electric vehicle lifestyle and things that plug in via USB-C. He spent over 15 years in IT support before joining The Verge.

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Screen capture of rover on surface of moon — a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Image: ISRO

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is riding on the high of its Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission’s successful landing, sharing more of it with the world by posting a new video of the lander’s imager observing the rover as it rotates on the no-longer-Super-Blue Moon’s surface.

India’s space agency is trying to research the Moon’s history on the south pole, where the Chandrayaan-3 probe successfully landed last week.

The post describes the rover as a child “playfully frolicking in the yards of Chandamama” in a video captured on August 29th. Chandamama is a term of endearment toward the Moon in Hindi and other regional languages and is also used in nursery rhymes. (My mom used to sing this to me as a lullaby.)

The rotation commands to the rover come after ISRO needed to make a path correction for the rover’s movements to avoid a crater — following its exit from the lander, down the ramp, and onto the Moon’s surface. And yesterday, the rover, Pragyan, used its navigation camera to take a picture of its lunar lander buddy named Vikram.