Posted on 08/15/2023 12:42:59 PM PDT by libh8er
India's space agency has released the first images of the Moon taken by the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which entered lunar orbit on Saturday.
The images show craters on lunar surface getting larger and larger as the spacecraft draws closer.
Chandrayaan-3's lander and rover are due to reach the surface on 23 August.
If successful, India will be the first country to perform a controlled "soft landing" near the south pole.
It will also become only the fourth to achieve a soft landing on the Moon after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.
After the spacecraft orbited the Earth for about 10 days, it was sent into the translunar orbit last Tuesday and successfully injected into the lunar orbit on Saturday.
Indian Space Research Agency (Isro) said that all checks showed that Chandrayaan-3 was in good "health".
It has also pointed out that "this is the third time in succession that Isro has successfully injected a spacecraft into the lunar orbit".
Scientists say 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Green cheese. I knew it!
Impressive imagery.
/s
Soon to open first Convenience Store on the Moon..............
I wonder what it’s like to play Cricket on the Moon?
I would imagine it would take a long time....................
We should have been more assertive in claiming the moon back in the 70s. Now India and others using US tech are taking over.
Great, now the whole moon is going to smell like curry.
The lander is expected to touch down at 7:11 AM India Standard Time.
Taking what over?
Some craters?
Lemon Curry?
🤦♂️😜.......................
“I wonder what it’s like to play Cricket on the Moon?”
Well, nobody on the moon understands the rules either, so it’s probably about the same as here on earth.
We should have claimed it, now set up colonies and mining and all. Instead, China and India will do it and likely limit us. These two countries should have been kept in their cesspool borders, even shoot down their space launches. But no, we’re surrendering space and the moon to them.
and larger and larger - oops! We lost the video feed!
By the time we set foot on the moon, we were already members of a treaty preventing us from claiming it.
And what would we want it for anyway? You want all those freeloading Moonicans coming here looking for free medical care?
Have You Been High Today?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdyC1BrQd6g
No offense but I’m not connecting to your sense of alarm on this. Let China build some lunar colonies and try to “limit us”. I am just not seeing what the huge loss is. It doesn’t have water (like Mars might) and I don’t even know if it has precious minerals. Does it? Help me out here. Not trying to be flippant. I’m actually asking.
The Russian lunar polar lander is due on August 21. These are firsts. No previous landings in the polar regions. Plane changes are non trivial and polar landings not done til now.
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