Chandrayaan-3 Lander Payloads and Science

Abstract

Our nearest celestial neighbour Moon has been the focus of multiple space missions from countries across the globe in recent years. These missions aimed either to make remote measurements while orbiting around/passing-by the Moon or to make in situ measurements by landing on the Moons surface. India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission is the latest in these missions to have soft landed on Moon and made important scientific measurements. In fact, Chandrayaan- 3 is country’s second lander-rover mission to Moon. The successful descend of Chandrayaan-3 on the southern polar region of the Moon on 23rd August 2023, made India the first nation to successfully do so. With this India became the fourth country to soft land on the Moon. The Chandrayaan-3 Lander module, named ‘Vikram’, and the Rover, named ‘Pragyaan’, had scientific payloads onboard to carry out experiments on the lunar surface and near surface environment . Therefore, this mission also has the distinction of obtaining the first ever direct measurements on Lunar polar near surface plasma ambience, Lunar surface composition, and subsurface thermal conductivity. This paper presents a brief description of these experiments and the measurements made through them.