NASA has announced three missions to the moon as part of efforts to establish a permanent base on the earth's natural satellite. The USD 20 billion plan includes lunar rovers and drones for experiments to help master skills to live and operate in the dangerous environment.
'From day one, our vision has been to build a company that develops and owns the technologies defining the future of space.'
NASA has invited ISRO to join its ambitious Moon Base mission to establish a permanent lunar outpost near the Moon's South Pole, aiming for scientific discoveries and future deep space exploration. This invitation follows discussions at the Civil Space Joint Working Group meeting in Bengaluru, where both nations also advanced cooperation under the Artemis Accords and the TRUST initiative.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin experienced a major setback as its New Glenn rocket exploded during an engine-firing test at a launch pad in Florida, raising concerns about its ability to compete with SpaceX in the commercial space race.
While New Jersey, US-based OrbitBeyond leads a consortium of subcontractors who have designed and developed hardware for deep space missions, Bengaluru-based Team Indus is leading OrbitBeyond's lander engineering, reports T E Narasimhan.
While India's interplanetary ambitions remain significant, the current pace of financial and technical progress raises questions about whether the 2027-2028 timelines can be met.
Russia's state space corporation, Roskosmos, according to the Reuters report, said it had lost contact with the spacecraft shortly after a problem occurred as it was shunted into pre-landing orbit on Saturday.
It is unclear if this episode will affect or prevent the lunar lander -- which was slated to land near the moon's south pole as soon as Monday -- from attempting a touchdown.
Scientists at ISRO used the orbiter high resolution camera onboard the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter to study the lunar surface hours before and after the soft-landing of Vikram lander on the moon on August 23.
Chandrayaan-3 mission's lander 'Vikram' chose a relatively flat region on the lunar surface to touch down, images captured by its camera showed.
ISRO on Friday said it has made efforts to establish communication with its lunar mission Chandrayaan-3's lander Vikram and rover Pragyan to ascertain their 'wake-up condition' after they had been put into sleep mode early this month -- but no signals have been received from them as of now.
The agency said it is currently receiving a signal from the lander, which is communicating as expected.
So, if ISRO is able to revive them as the Sun rises on the Moon again, information that is derived from experiments that could once again be conducted by the Chandrayaan-3 payloads would be a "bonus".
ISRO on Monday said the Vikram lander successfully underwent a hop test when it made the soft-landing again on the lunar surface.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission that aims for a soft landing on the moon's surface, paving the way for future interplanetary missions, carries six payloads that would help ISRO understand the lunar soil and also get the blue planet's photographs from the lunar orbit.
According to the space agency, Chandra's Surface Thermophysical Experiment measured the temperature profile of the lunar topsoil around the south pole, to understand the thermal behaviour of the Moon's surface.
The Vikram lander was 100 kilometers away from LRO, near Manzinus crater in the Moon's south pole region, when LRO transmitted laser pulses toward it on December 12 last year.
The initial assessment of the first-ever measurements of the near-surface lunar plasma environment over the south pole region by RAMBHA-LP payload onboard Chandrayaan-3 lander indicates that plasma there is relatively sparse, ISRO said on Thursday.
The mission objectives of Chandrayaan-3 are to demonstrate a safe and soft landing on the lunar surface, to demonstrate rover roving on the Moon, and to conduct in-situ scientific experiments.
Lander Module of Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft comprising the lander and rover has successfully separated from the Propulsion Module, Indian Space Research Organisation said on Thursday.
Chandrayaan-3 mission's Pragyan rover on Wednesday clicked an image of the Vikram lander, ISRO said.
Announcing that the health of Chandrayaan-3's Lander Module is normal, ISRO on Friday said that the module has successfully undergone a deboosting (slowing down) operation, taking it closer to the Moon.
The Chandrayaan-2 mission has made the first-ever observation of the effects of the Sun's Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) on the Moon using its onboard scientific instruments. This observation would help understand the lunar exosphere and the impact of space weather on its surface.
ISRO on Friday released a set of visuals of the Moon captured by cameras positioned on the Lander Module of Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft.
Chandrayaan-1, India's first mission to the Moon, was launched on October 22, 2008 from Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh.
In a giant leap for its space programme, India's Moon mission Chandrayaan-3 touched down on the lunar south pole at 6.04 pm on Wednesday, propelling the country to an exclusive club of four and making it the first country to land on the uncharted surface.
Four years after it broke many hearts, Indian Space Research Organisation's Chandrayaan is all set to soar towards the moon in its third expedition on Friday in an attempt to put the country in an elite club of nations that accomplished lunar missions with a soft landing.
The rover will carry out in-situ chemical analysis of the lunar surface during the course of its mobility.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was accorded a warm reception as he arrived at the Indian Space Research Organisation headquarters in Bengaluru on Saturday morning.
The Vikram Moon Lander, named after the father of India's space mission Vikram Sarabhai on his birth centenary year, is scheduled to touch the lunar surface near its south pole on September 7 about 1.55 am.
ISRO chief's comments came after NASA said that it had found the remains of the Vikram lander by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and credited the discovery to Chennai-based amateur astronomer and engineer Shanmuga Subramanium.
ISRO has said once the Lunar night falls, there would be no sunlight for the lander to generate power for its working and also it was not designed to operate in the heavy cold temperature of Moon during the phase.
"The duration of manoeuvre was 1,738 seconds. With this, Chandrayaan-2 was successfully inserted into a Lunar orbit," Indian Space Research Organisation said.
'The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imaged the area of the targeted Chandrayaan-2 Vikram landing site on October 14 but did not observe any evidence of the lander'
An ISRO official said: "Unless and until everything is intact (lander), it's very difficult (to re-establish contact). Chances are less. Only if it had soft-landing, and if all systems functioned, then only communication can be restored. Things are bleak as of now."
The space agency had got support from the entire nation, despite it losing communication with the lander ahead of the touchdown, with people from all walks of life praising ISRO and its scientists for the achievement.
"Progressively, you can imagine that it becomes that much more difficult, with each passing hour, the available power on the battery gets drained out, and there won't be anything left for it to power and operate", an ISRO official said.
On October 3, Subramanian, a Chennai-based mechanical engineer, had tagged the Twitter handles of NASA, LRO and ISRO in a tweet, asking, "Is this Vikram lander? (1 km from the landing spot) Lander might have been buried in Lunar sand?"
All spacecraft parameters are normal, the Bengaluru headquartered space agency said after the maneuver.
Asked if the lander was 'damaged' during the 'hard landing", Sivan said: "That we do not know".
