India’s small lunar rover Pragyan has successfully completed a tour of the Moon’s South Pole, after the historic landing recently. Now the car is parked for the brutally cold night, which lasts for almost three earth weeks.
“The rover has completed its tasks. It is now firmly parked and has been put into sleep mode,” says the space agency Isro.
Pragyan has sent back loads of data for analysis in India. Among other things, the mission was to look for traces of frozen water at the moon’s south pole, which human probes have never visited before.
Internal combustion engines do not work on the moon, so Pragyan, like all previous lunar vehicles, is electric and equipped with solar panels for charging. Now Isro is keeping its fingers crossed that the technology can survive the brutal lunar winter, which can mean temperatures of minus 120 degrees or even colder.
“The battery is fully charged. The solar panel is positioned to receive the light when the sun rises on September 22,” writes the Swedish Space Agency. “We hope for a successful awakening to new tasks!”
The rover is part of the Chandrayaan-3 expedition, which is already seen as a major success. India became the fourth country to land a probe on the moon, and only a few days after Russia’s Luna 25 failed – it crashed and was destroyed.
India is now betting on becoming a major power also in the context of space, and this weekend also sent up the probe Aditya L1 to study the sun.