India’s space agency has released latest images of the Moon as its third lunar mission starts descending towards the little-explored south pole.
The pictures have been taken by Vikram, Chandrayaan-3’s lander, which began the last phase of its mission on Thursday.
Vikram, which carries a rover in its belly, is due to land near the south pole on 23 August.
The lander detached from the propulsion module, which carried it close to the Moon, on Thursday.
The black-and-white images show close-ups of rocks and craters on the Moon’s surface. One of the photographs shows the propulsion module too.
Chandrayaan-3 and Russia’s Luna-25 are among the two spacecraft headed towards the Moon’s south pole and both are expected to land next week.
Luna-25 – Russia’s first Moon mission since 1976, when it was part of the Soviet Union – was launched last week and is expected to make history by making a soft landing on 21st or 22nd August, just days before the Indian touchdown. If it succeeds, Chandrayaan-3 will have to settle for being a close second in reaching the south pole.
India, however, will still be only the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.
Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) said on Friday that the lander module had begun its descent to a lower orbit.
Chandrayaan-3, the third in India’s programme of lunar exploration, is expected to build on the success of its earlier Moon missions.
It comes 13 years after the country’s first Moon mission in 2008, which discovered the presence of water molecules on the parched lunar surface and established that the Moon has an atmosphere during daytime.
Chandrayaan-2 – which also comprised an orbiter, a lander and a rover – was launched in July 2019 but it was only partially successful. Its orbiter continues to circle and study the Moon even today, but the lander-rover failed to make a soft landing and crashed during touchdown.
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