Chandrayaan 3 lander and rover, India's lunar mission to replace Chandrayaan 2's lander/rover Options

[Phil Stooke]

neo56 pointed out (post #137 above) that the horizons in the first two Pragyan images could be combined to make a mini-panorama. The foregrounds don't match so it only works with the horizon features.

Near the left end of that mini-pan there is a trio of craters. I noticed they are also seen on one of the recent images of the lander, so another image can be added to the panorama. There is a second lander image where the lander blocks a different bit of the horizon so it could be added as well, but the geometry is tricky so I haven't tried it yet.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

Experimenting further, I added parts of the second image and played with a reprojection to try to match with orbital images. I don't really know how much of the horizon is visible here so treat this as an experiment, not true geometry.

Phil

[Hungry4info]

Chandrayaan-3 seismograph detecting rover motion... and maybe a moonquake?
https://www.isro.gov.in/Ch3_ILSA_Listens_Landing_Site.html

[nogal]

As of a few minutes ago LROC had not released an image of Chandrayaan's landing site.
LROC's resolution is 0.5 m/pixel and Pragyan is under 1m in length/width. Its wheels are very narrow, so I think it will be quite difficult to identify any tracks.

Pragyan's full traverse route has not been publicly shared, to my knowledge. But looking at the image of backtracking due to a large (4m) crater, a boulder on a further away crater's rim set me wondering.

So here is a wild guess, a total speculation, just for the fun of it. Any comments are very welcome!



Fernando

[Phil Stooke]

Hi Nogal - I think the hills on the horizon in the image you show are on the south horizon, not the east.

Phil

[Ohsin]

Gallery updated with images from rover.
https://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan3_gallery.html

[Hungry4info]

ISRO's twitter has provided us with a route map for Pragyan.

Meanwhile, over the Moon, Pragan Rover has traversed over 100 meters and continuing.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[nogal]

Hi Nogal - I think the hills on the horizon in the image you show are on the south horizon, not the east.

Phil

Thanks for pointing it out Phil.
Fernando

[Hungry4info]

From ISRO's twitter.
https://twitter.com/isro/status/1698010732128764164

The Rover completed its assignments.

It is now safely parked and set into Sleep mode. APXS and LIBS payloads are turned off. Data from these payloads is transmitted to the Earth via the Lander.

Currently, the battery is fully charged. The solar panel is oriented to receive the light at the next sunrise expected on September 22, 2023. The receiver is kept on.

Hoping for a successful awakening for another set of assignments! Else, it will forever stay there as India's lunar ambassador.

[nogal]

ISRO has Xed (twitted) again:

Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
The Rover completed its assignments.

It is now safely parked and set into Sleep mode.
APXS and LIBS payloads are turned off.
Data from these payloads is transmitted to the Earth via the Lander.

Currently, the battery is fully charged.
The solar panel is oriented to receive the light at the next sunrise expected on September 22, 2023.
The receiver is kept on.

Hoping for a successful awakening for another set of assignments!
Else, it will forever stay there as India's lunar ambassador.

Fernando

[Phil Stooke]

The route map from ISRO is great to have but I am a bit unsure about the scale. The scale bar says 50 m x 50 m, which I presume means the bar represents 50 m and the scale is the same in both N-S and E-W directions. You might say all maps should have the same scale in both directions but that's not true of, for instance, most parts of a simple cylindrical (equirectangular) map.

OK, so what about the statement that the total traverse is 101.4 m? The only way that seems to match the scale bar is if 101.4 m is the straight line distance from Vikram to Pragyan at the end of its travels. The actual distance driven could be nearly twice that.

Presumably each individual drive is shown by a line of different colour. Lets hope we see some more Pragyan images soon.

Phil

[fredk]

Would it work if the full dimensions of the map were 50x50m, and the "total traverse" was the total path length? Or perhaps the radius of the large yellow circle was 50m?

I get the visual impression that this path was drawn by hand, so perhaps it isn't very accurate.

[Phil Stooke]

Why didn't I think to do this before? I compared it with Jake's map, and of course Fred was right, the radius of the circle is 50 m. That makes the total distance driven look like 101.4 m. So the way the scale bar is labelled is misleading.

Phil

[Ohsin]

Have there been any LRO passes over the landing site in last 10 days?

[Phil Stooke]

Yes, there was a flyover in sunlight about 2 days after landing. No release of details yet but there is no urgency since the OHRC image was already published. LRO will be a bit less detailed than OHRC but would show the rover on the surface.

Phil