Novina Putri Bestari, CNBC Indonesia
Tech
Friday, 01/26/2024 20:40 IWST
Photo: People watch the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-3, the word for “lunar craft” in Sanskrit, lift off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India, Friday, July 14, 2023. (AP/Aijaz Rahi)
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The United States (US) Space Agency, NASA, reportedly fired a laser at an Indian lander robot named Vikram. But don’t worry, this is not a space war between two countries.
This activity is an experiment. The goal is to find out the location of objects on the Moon.
The laser was fired by the Reconnaissance Orbiter to penetrate a distance of 100 kilometers from orbit to the surface of the Moon. The test succeeded in hitting a target that was 5 centimeters wide, quoted from IFL ScienceFriday (26/1/2024).
The laser that was sent was successfully captured by Vikram. Next, the robot reflects the laser back to where it came from.
IFL Science writing reflects light to and from the satellite to determine its orbital position. Meanwhile laser shooting experiments on the Moon were carried out to determine the location of a stationary object.
Vikram’s robot is no longer working and has never moved its location. But in the future, this experiment will be useful for finding out the location of moving missions on the Moon.
The retroreflector that Vikram used in this experiment was the size of an oreo and was developed by Xiaoli Sun’s team. The tool is said to be able to reflect light received by the robot from all directions.
The tool used is optical. So it’s more efficient because it doesn’t need to use power or maintenance.
For the last 13 years NASA has usually used the Lunar Orbiter altimeter, LOLA for laser instruments. However, unfortunately LOLA is not designed to reach small targets.
Usually LOLA can only target a width of 10 meters. So it’s quite difficult to fire lasers at smaller targets.
Watch the video below:
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