India's first steps on the moon have been successful ones with the country creating history becoming the first-ever nation to softly land a spacecraft on the South Pole of the moon.
Under the Chandrayaan-3 mission of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Vikram lander created history on August 23 after successfully making a soft landing on the surface of the moon. Since then, the Pragyan rover has gone on to achieve all its scheduled objectives within one lunar day or 14 earth days.
ISRO has been regularly sharing updates of the missions undertaken by the rover and posted a video on Monday on X of the Vikram lander hop on the moon!
Taking to X, ISRO mentioned that the lander exceeded its mission objectives. "It successfully underwent a hop experiment," wrote ISRO.
The post read, "Chandrayaan-3 Mission: 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," added ISRO.
