The big news is that Chandrayaan 3 landed softly on the moon’s southern pole on August 23. No other country has done this before, so it’s a huge deal. The director of Isro, S Somnath, says this place is interesting because it doesn’t get much sunlight, but it might be good for humans to live here someday. Here’s what they found on the moon so far
On August 30, the Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy instrument on board the ‘Pragyan’ rover found sulfur on the moon near the south pole. They also found other stuff like Aluminum, Calcium, Iron, Chromium, Titanium, Manganese, Silicon, and Oxygen. They’re still looking for Hydrogen.
The Chandrayaan 3 rover is racing against time to explore as much of the south pole as possible. They only have 14 days for this mission, which is like one day on the moon. They’ve done four days of experiments, so they’re trying to do as much as they can in the next ten days.
While the Pragyan rover was rolling around doing science stuff, it ran into a 4-meter-wide crater that wasn’t supposed to be there. It was just 3 meters in front of where the rover was supposed to go. The moon’s south pole is full of these craters.
Chandrayaan 3 is also checking the moon’s temperatures. It’s super cold at minus 10 degrees Celsius, about 80 mm below the surface. But it gets warmer as you get closer to the surface, like 60 degrees Celsius about 20 mm above the soil. This tells them about how the moon’s temperature changes, which is pretty cool.
So yeah, Chandrayaan 3 is doing some neat stuff on the moon.
