Crawling on its six independently movable wheels, the Pragyan rover has crawled the moon surface 100 metres away from the lander, Vikram, the Indian space agency, ISRO’s Chairman, Sreedhara Somnath, said today.
Speaking after the successful injection of the Aditya L-1 spacecraft into its designated orbit above the Earth, Somnath took a moment to mention that the rover had moved 100 metres from the lander, out of which it slid to the lunar surface on August 23.
The lander and the rover have a couple of days of work left, before night engulfs that part of the Moon, plunging it into darkness and denying the instruments’ solar panels sunlight to generate electricity.
“We are in the process of putting them both (Vikram lander and Pragyan rover) to sleep,” Somnath said.
It is not expected that they will wake up from that sleep, for the electronics onboard the instruments may deep-freeze. However, if they come alive when the sun shines on that part of the moon again, after 14 days, it will be a bonus.
ISRO has also tweeted the path taken by the rover, showing clearly where it avoided falling into a pit, a few days ago.
Both the rover and the lander have instruments onboard that are performing experiments and taking measurements, generating data that is enhancing mankind’s understanding of the Moon.