Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah congratulates ISRO scientists after the profitable gentle touchdown of ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 on the floor of the Moon, on the ISRO middle, Peenya, in Bengaluru on August 24, 2023.
| Picture Credit score: PTI
With the Chandrayaan-3’s lander module Vikram efficiently making a landing on the moon and the rover Pragyan ramping down, one digicam developed by Laboratory for Electro-Optics Methods (LEOS) in Bengaluru has already made an affect whereas one other can be guiding the Pragyan because it traverses the moon’s floor.
The Lander Horizontal Velocity Digicam (LHVC), which is onboard the Vikram, has already clicked the primary picture of the moon throughout its descent on the lunar floor on Wednesday
LHVC, which was initially developed for the Chandrayaan-2 mission, has additionally been adopted for the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
“LHVC has an vital function of measuring horizontal velocity through the Lander descent part. It does a posh algorithm calculating the rate wherein the lander is travelling. This instrument supplies vital data through the descent, ” stated Subhalakshmi Krishnamoorthy, who led a group of scientists at LEOS to develop the digicam.
The second digicam is the Navigation digicam (NAVCAM) and two of them would be the eyes of the Rover, guiding it because it traverses the moon’s floor.
Each NAVCAMs are fitted within the entrance of the rover for path planning and impediment avoidance for the rover.
“The Pragyan Rover has two Navigation cameras fitted within the entrance of the rover to navigate the Rover within the lunar terrain. NAVCAM-Left & NAVCAM -Proper assist in path planning and impediment avoidance, to make sure that there isn’t a rock, there isn’t a impediment, there isn’t a pit and so forth., within the path. It is sort of a human being or robotic having eyes, so wherever the rover goes to maneuver there’s a path planning which is completed based mostly on the stereo photos from Navcams” stated Ms Krishnamoorthy, the previous Deputy director of ISRO. She attributed the success to the honest and devoted onerous work of her group members.
She added that each the cameras have been developed for the Chandrayaan-2 lander and rover. Nonetheless, the Chandrayaan 2 mission led to a failure when through the descent, the Vikram lander crashed on the lunar floor. It subsequently misplaced communication with the bottom stations.