First Photo of India’s Chandrayaan-3 Moon Rover and Lander Captured at Lunar South Pole

India’s lunar rover took the first photo of its mothership on the lunar surface, a week after the nation made history with its Chandrayaan-3 mission.

The country beat out the likes of Russia, China and the United States to become the first state to land a spacecraft on the lunar south pole on Aug. 23.

Not only that, but he did it on a modest budget of $73 million (£57 million), which is less money than it cost to make the Hollywood space movies Interstellar and Gravity.

The two-week mission has now reached halfway, with the The Pragyan lunar rover and the Vikram lander race to finish their groundbreaking exploration before the solar batteries on both rover run out.

Neither ship is expected to survive the next two-week lunar night.

Before this can happen though, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) made sure to capture what its Vikram lander looks like through Pragyan’s eyes.

ISRO officials released two black-and-white images showing the lander sitting proudly on the dust-covered lunar surface.

‘Please smile! Pragyan Rover clicked on an image of Vikram Lander this morning,” ISRO said in a post sharing the images on X (formerly Twitter).

‘The ‘mission image’ was taken by the Rover’s onboard navigation camera (NavCam)’.

One of the images shows two of Vikram’s science sensors deployed on the lunar surface: the Chandra Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) and the Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA).

The Chandrayaan-3 mission landed on the moon on August 23. A day later, Pragyan descended from Vikram and has been wandering ever since.

Among his scientific work to date is the distinction of being the first machine to find chemical elements at the Moon’s south pole “in situ,” that is, where they exist, rather than being detected at a distance by an orbiter. .

It has recorded evidence of sulfur, aluminum, calcium, iron, chromium, titanium, manganese, silicon, and oxygen, while the search for hydrogen is now underway.

Sara Russell, professor of planetary sciences at London’s Natural History Museum, said the rover’s discovery has “really important implications” for both researchers and astronauts.

“Sulfur is often bound to important metals such as iron and nickel, and these may be important minerals that could be used by future astronauts to enable them to live and work on the Moon,” he told MailOnline.

“We already know that the Moon contains sulfur thanks to our analyzes of rocks returned from the Moon by space missions and of lunar meteorites.

‘What we really don’t know is the distribution and abundance of sulfur on the Moon.

“This has really important implications for understanding how the Moon evolved.

“For example, how much sulfur was lost when the Moon first formed in a giant impact, and how do the different layers of rock on the Moon differ in composition today?”

ISRO has been regularly tweeting updates on the progress of its Chandrayaan-3 mission over the past week, including sharing amazing photos of the lunar south region.

The science instruments on both the lander and rover will be active for a total of just one lunar day (14 Earth days) before losing power, a relatively short mission.

Once the time period ends, the rover and lander will idle on the moon and end the mission.

Chandrayaan-3’s instruments will end their days covered in lunar dust, although it is not impossible that manned missions to our natural satellite can recover their parts for reuse.

Although India is the fourth country after the United States, Russia and China to safely land a spacecraft on the Moon, it made history by being the first to do so on the south pole of the Moon.

Russia attempted to land a spacecraft in the lunar south on August 19, but failed spectacularly when it went out of control and crashed, leaving the way clear for India to seal the achievement.

Chandrayaan-3 actually left Earth more than a month ago, aboard a rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Center north of Chennai on July 14.

Indian spacecraft have taken much longer to reach the Moon than NASA’s Apollo missions, which arrived in a matter of days, because the Asian nation is using far less powerful rockets.