India walks across the moon, Russia picks up the pieces and Japan starts its journey – 08/27/2023 – Sidereal Messenger

After the thrill of the landing last Wednesday (23), the Chandrayaan-3 Indian mission continues to make perfect progress. On Thursday (24), the Pragyan rover descended through a folding ramp of the Vikram landing module and is already roaming the lunar surface.

Right after the deposition of the six-wheeled vehicle on the ground, it advanced for about eight meters and had its two instruments turned on, a laser spectroscope capable of determining the chemical composition of the lunar surface and an X-ray spectrometer that will detect the presence of elements such as magnesium, aluminum, silicon, potassium, calcium, titanium and iron in the soil and rocks of the landing region. According to Isro, the Indian space agency, the instruments on the Vikram and on the propulsion module left in orbit are also operating normally.

This is just the beginning of a project that will last around 14 days, with the expectation that the rover will be able to travel for a distance of up to 500 meters from the landing module, powered by a solar panel that is curiously positioned on the vertical – remember that the probe is close to the lunar south pole, from where the Sun is seen very low on the horizon (as is the case at the terrestrial poles).

The duration, by the way, is limited by the lunar day – as soon as the Sun finally sets in the landing region, the panels will no longer generate energy and temperatures will plummet to levels below -200 °C. Without internal systems capable of keeping the circuits warm, both the lander and the rover must stop working, ending a glorious fortnight for the Indian space program.

This was not, however, the only highlight in lunar exploration in the past week. For what was largely configured as a coincidence, three countries shared attention with missions destined to the Earth’s natural satellite. In addition to India, we also had the ill-fated Russian mission Luna-25, which ended with an early and embarrassing failure last Saturday (19), in an orbit adjustment maneuver before the landing attempt.

On Friday (25), the director general of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, Yuri Borisov, met with the mission team at the headquarters of NPO Lavochkina, the company responsible for the project. Licking his wounds, he said that the failure, which has not yet been clarified, will serve as a lesson for future endeavors. “There is no need to turn this into a tragedy, we need to draw conclusions and keep working,” he said.

According to Borisov, one of the possibilities for the continuation of the Russian lunar program is the repetition of the landing effort in the south pole region, with an improved version of the spacecraft, in two to three years – something that India also had to do, after the failure of Chandrayaan-2 in 2019.

Finally, there is Japan, which intended to launch its Slim lunar mission last Friday, but bad weather at the Tanegashima Space Center ended up pushing the launch to Sunday night (27), by Brasilia time. Taking a long way to the Moon, the spacecraft should only try to make its landing in a few months, which could make Japan the fifth nation to successfully accomplish such a feat. To check.

This column is published on Mondays in the printed version, in Folha Corrida.

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