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ISRO livestream of Chandrayaan-3 lunar landing attempt starts Wednesday August 23 at 4:50 AM PDT/7:50 AM EDT

https://www.isro.gov.in/

Success!! Chandrayaan-3 soft landed on the Moon!

(The tension was excruciating as it descended.)

Chandrayaan-3 is communicating with Earth and downloading data.

ISRO photo taken during the descent

NASA JPL confirms that the Deep Space Network is receiving data from Chandrayaan.



ISRO hasn't released any photos taken on the Moon's surface as of yet, but somebody leaked this photo taken inside the mission control center during celebrations after landing

Under 165 million dollars!

India just announced their next lunar lander.

This will be called LUPEX (Chandrayaan-4) and will be a joint project by ISRO (the Indian Space Research Organization, the Indian government space agency) and JAXA (the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, the Japanese government space agency). It is planned for 2026 and will land at the Moon's south pole. It will release a rover whose purpose is to look for water, perhaps the most precious substance on the Moon. (It has oxygen for breathing and rocket oxidizer, hydrogen for rocket fuel, and of course is good for drinking.)

Chandrayaan's little rover has deployed from the lander to the lunar surface and has rolled about 8 meters from the lander.

https://twitter.com/isro/status/1694945669721776263

Sunset is coming to the Lunar south pole region where Chandrayaan-3 landed. ISRO aren't sure that the little rover can survive the dark cold lunar night

ISRO says

Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
The Rover completed its assignments.

It is now safely parked and set into Sleep mode.
APXS and LIBS payloads are turned off.
Data from these payloads is transmitted to the Earth via the Lander.

Currently, the battery is fully charged.
The solar panel is oriented to receive the light at the next sunrise expected on September 22, 2023.
The receiver is kept on.

Hoping for a successful awakening for another set of assignments!
Else, it will forever stay there as India's lunar ambassador.

The litte rover may have gone to sleep, but the lander is wide awake and is jumping around!

ISRO says:

Vikram soft-landed on Moon, again!

Vikram Lander exceeded its mission objectives. It successfully underwent a hop experiment.

On command, it fired the engines, elevated itself by about 40 cm as expected and landed safely at a distance of 30 – 40 cm away.

Importance?: This 'kick-start' enthuses future sample return and human missions!

All systems performed nominally and are healthy. Deployed Ramp, ChaSTE and ILSA were folded back and redeployed successfully after the experiment.