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

[Ohsin]

Thanks Phil.

Also they performed a hop!
https://twitter.com/isro/status/1698570774385205621

Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
🇮🇳Vikram soft-landed on 🌖, again!
Vikram Lander exceeded its mission objectives. It successfully underwent a hop experiment.
On command, it fired the engines, elevated itself by about 40 cm as expected and landed safely at a distance of 30 – 40 cm away.
Importance?: This 'kick-start' enthuses future sample return and human missions!
All systems performed nominally and are healthy. Deployed Ramp, ChaSTE and ILSA were folded back and redeployed successfully after the experiment.

Scott might have exact time of event.
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1698578973410972089

Did the experiment occur at ~2023-09-03T13:00 UTC yesterday?

Before and after images from lander camera.
https://imgur.com/a/6UyQUxB

[Quetzalcoatl]

Bonjour,

Continued operations

https://twitter.com/isro/status/16986186947...618694795219401

[Zelenyikot]

Lunar surface pre and post Chandrayaan 3 hop test.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Huguet]

This 'kick-start' enthuses future sample return and human missions!

One thing we can say for shure of Indian missions, they embrace the challenge... i hope they come with a aggressive timeline to push things up a little.

[Ohsin]

They released 3D anaglyph image made using rover navcam pairs

https://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan3_gallery.html



Edit: Adding no glass version.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[charborob]

Chandrayaan-3 landing site from LRO (link)

[Phil Stooke]

Very nice. Here I have cropped it and rotated to put north near the top (not exactly - see the north arrow on one of those images). This is a late morning image and Pragyan would have been close to the lander. I can't see it. The image was taken off-nadir so the view is oblique and lower resolution than will be possible with a vertical view. I have very roughly reprojected it to make craters look circular.

Phil

[Ohsin]

Chandrayaan-3 lander has been imaged by the Dual-frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (DFSAR) instrument onboard the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter on 6 September 2023.
https://www.isro.gov.in/Ch3Lander_imagedby_Ch2SAR.html
Edit: Rough comparison https://imgur.com/a/2z6XFGx

[Phil Stooke]

I compared the horizon panorama (very roughly reprojected... north up but not sure I have the azimuth range correct) with the LRO image to identify some small craters. I hope we get some more rover images so the horizon features can be extended. I am still not able to identify the hill northeast of the lander.

Phil

[Ohsin]

KPLO also imaged Chandrayaan-3 landing site on 27 August.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jreJDvK5FJs
https://www.instagram.com/p/CxFORfUyzK9/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CxFRROFvgjT/

Edit: Press release.
https://www.kari.re.kr/kplo/danuri/multi/mu...aView.do?idx=41

[Phil Stooke]

The sun will rise at the Chandrayaan 3 landing site, Shiv Shakti Point, round about now. It has to get higher in the sky before any return to operations of Vikram and Pragyan, if that is even possible. I am doubtful but the attempt will be made in a few days. It relies entirely on Vikram, because if Pragyan wakes up but Vikram doesn't we will never know - only the lander can communicate with us.

Meanwhile, a bit of detective work.

One of the rover images looked across a foreground crater and out to the eastern horizon. Here is a version of the image very roughly projected for perspective:



The horizon features establish the pointing reasonably well. So here is an orbital image showing that camera field of view:



And here is a detail of the ISRO traverse map with the field of view plotted on it. Small craters on the bottom edge can be matched to confirm this (I don't show them here). The large crater has a small crater in the foreground on the upper edge of the image.



From this I believe that the location of the southern end of the traverse in this area is not drawn correctly on the ISRO map. The rover has to be somewhere near the location shown by my two lines. It might not be exactly right but I don't see that the rover could be where the ISRO map suggests. The view of the eastern horizon from the ISRO position would look north of the foreground crater, not across it.

Phil

[Ohsin]

It made it through!

Chandrayaan3 possible emission detected as the Moon is rising here.

https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1704990165008302213

I can confirm Kourou is uplinking to #Chandrayaan3 as well and the uplink matches the downlink being used.

https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1704990946990170237

2241.6MHz just came on from #Chandrayaan3 !

https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1704991753340854522

Meanwhile Chandrayaan3 on 2268MHz, the emission has jumped around and has a rather high drift rate. This could be the electronics warming up after being turned on and other systems coming up as I just saw the other transmitter come online at 2241.6MHz.

https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1704992559138058726

Chandrayaan3 drifting heavily but just starting to get audible. I suspect they have just turned on things and the thermal equilibrium of the lander is way out of balance. It will take time for it to settle.

https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1704993985511706882

[Ohsin]

Apologies for premature celebrations.. Scott found out it was just LRO transmission..

Sad news, this emission just shy of 2268MHz (#Chandrayaan3's channel) is in fact from NASA's LRO. It's a weak side-band.
So that means no definitive signal observations from #Chandrayaan3 thus far.

https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1705034607861887062

What is known is Kourou has been transmitting on the uplink for the #Chandrayaan3 lander and hasn't caused it to respond (yet).

https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1705035854157337077

[Bill Harris]

The airless Lunar environment is rough to work In from just the temperature extremes. But the deeper we get into the polar regions the closer we'll get to a zone of equitable average temperature and no "noon-midnight" extremes.

[Ohsin]

Dr. K V Sriram (Director, LEOS) on LEOS-Electro optic Sensors and Instruments for Chandrayaan-3 gave a presentation on 22 September. It had new stereo pair from rover navcams.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ6p0Heqf_E&t=2577s

This rock in middle is right next to a big crater.

Attached thumbnail(s)