India’s Chandrayaan-3 The moon lander has been placed in sleep mode to help Chandrayaan-3 survive the freezing temperatures of the lunar night.
The Vikram module was set to idle mode on Monday, while the Pragyan rover powered down at the end of the week.
On August 23, India became the first country to land a craft in the southern polar region of the moon and the fourth to soft-land on the lunar surface.
“Vikram will fall asleep next to Pragyan once the solar power is depleted and the battery is drained,” the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said in an information post on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday.
“Hoping for Chandrayaan-3’s awakening and reworking around September 22, 2023.”
The rover’s battery is fully charged, and engineers confirm that it will also awaken during the next sunrise on September 22.
The time period of lunar days and nights lasts up to 14 days, with temperatures during the night plunging to -183°C.
The extreme temperature led to the freezing of the instruments on the rover and landing module.
Since landing on the moon, the mission has been sending back updated data about the surface, including the discovery of Sulphur traces.
Scientists believe Sulphur comes on the moons from volcanic activity, and deposits could reveal much about the moon’s composition and its geological history.
Vikram performed a hop (backup) on Monday, when it used its engines to move a short distance.
“Vikram Lander exceeded its mission objectives. It successfully shifts a hop experiment,” said ISRO.
“On command, it fired the engines, elevated itself or took itself around by about 40 centimeters as expected or designed, and landed safely at a distance of 30 to 40cm away.”
ISRO said the ‘kick-start’ shows the lander is fit for tasks such as sample returns or backfoot.
The agency said, All systems of Chandrayaan-3 performed nominally and are healthy with no technical errors. .
Apart from its moon ambitions, India is also interested in studying the sun as closely as possible.
It launched its Aditya-L1 probe last week to learn how the star affects space weather.
Scientists believe it is important to study the sun because its behavior influences the earth, other planets, and space itself.
The Aditya-L1 mission is expected to help unlock the secrets of solar activity, including helping scientists understand coronal heating better.
This is when the sun’s upper atmosphere, or corona, stays heated at millions of degrees, which is 200 to 500 times higher than the layer beneath it.