The Indian space mission, Chandrayaan-3, has revealed new things about the South Pole of the Moon which has been full of mystery. The US, China and Russia are now also planning missions to the region in the future. What makes it so attractive?
This is a place that no man-made object has ever reached before. However, last August, a small rover robot named Pargyaan launched from its mother, Vikram, and began exploring the area around the Moon’s South Pole.
This unmanned spacecraft is one of the pioneers that landed on the moon’s very cold and crater-filled poles.
While the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s were located near the Moon’s equator, India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission managed to land about 600 kilometers from the moon’s south pole.
This point is closer than any spacecraft has ever been to this location.
Chandrayaan-3 arrived after a Russian attempt, two days earlier, failed. Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft lost control and crashed.
India’s mission is the start of a rush of activity on this enigmatic part of the lunar surface, which will ultimately lead to humans setting foot there by the end of the decade.
“It feels extraordinary that this has happened,” said planetary researcher from The Open University in England, Simeon Barber.
Apart from India and Russia, the US and China are also eyeing the South Pole of the Moon. There, they hope to investigate some of the Moon’s most intriguing mysteries, perhaps even exploiting what they find.
But what is it about the Moon’s South Pole that makes it so attractive to explorers?
Chandrayaan-3 and its rover robot, which is only the size of a suitcase, found a number of interesting clues regarding the environment they explored on the Moon.
At a speed of about one centimeter per second across the dusty surface, the Pragyaan rover robot managed to move several meters away from its mother.
Pragyaan immersed his sensors in the Moon’s soil along his journey. He discovered a very sharp drop in temperature below the ground surface.
2023-10-22 12:17:21
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